Measuring German regions' environmental efficiency: A directional distance function approach

Abstract

This paper by applying a directional distance function approach measures German regions' municipality waste performance. By applying the weak disposability assumption the paper constructs environmental performance indexes for 39 German regions (NUTS 2 level) identifying their ability to produce more growth while simultaneously reduce pollution (municipal waste) generated from their regional economic activity. In addition the paper constructs conditional stochastic kernels trying to determine non-parametrically the association of regions' GDP per capita levels with their calculated regional environmental efficiencies. There are evidences of regional environmental inefficiencies for the majority of German regions with high probability to be produced from regions with lower GDP/c levels. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.