Essays On Environmental Efficiency Across Asia Pacific Countries:Determinants,Convergence And Enhancement Policy

Globally,countries are experiencing alarming climate change due to the excessive use of energy inputs,resulting in the indiscriminate release of gaseous pollutants such as CO₂,which is hazardous to human survival.It is,therefore,essential to identify the convergence point of economic growth and eco-performance today.Research on environmental efficiency is vital to the mitigation and control of waste and emissions which are all detrimental to the environment.Studies on environmental growth as well as convergence is also very necessary for countries to assess their use of inputs and outputs and employ the application of techniques that will simultaneously address profitable production and environmental degradationThe aim of this research,therefore,is to evaluate the trend of environmental efficiency,its determinants,improvement,convergence and enhanced policy in the Asia Pacific(APAC)countries.This research has been done based on four objectives.The first objective is set to estimate the trend of environmental efficiency.The second objective is to investigate the effects of technological innovation,human capital,economic growth and many other determinants on environmental efficiency.The third objective is to determine the convergence of environmental efficiency in the Asia Pacific countries.The fourth objective investigates the impact of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Covid(MERS-COV),as a policy shock on environmental efficiency in the Asia Pacific.The first and second objectives estimate and compare the trend of environmental efficiency index,obtained from the use of the super efficiency DEA model,for a panel of 14 countries within the period 1990-2018,in three demarcated regions in the Asia Pacific;South East Asia,South Asia and East Asia.Using the truncated regression,technological innovation,human capital and economic growth are evaluated as determinants of environmental efficiency.The truncated regression establishes an inverted U-shape relationship between environmental efficiency and technological innovation within the main panel and at the regional level.Economic growth also shows an inverted“U”shape relationship with environmental efficiency,save South East Asia which shows otherwise.Human capital is found to promote environmental efficiency in the main panel and in all the regions.Other control variables such as FDI is found to improve environmental efficiency in the main panel and in East Asia.However,in the South East Asia and South Asia,FDI reduces environmental efficiency.An interaction effect between technological innovation and renewable energy improves environmental efficiency in the study.The third objective is achieved through the use of the Metafrontier and Group Frontier Epsilon-Based DEA model to determine environmental efficiency trend and growth in the selected Asia Pacific countries whiles convergence analysis is done to determine the speed of environmental efficiency convergence.Discussion is done under both Metafrontier and Group frontier and the findings for Metafrontier indicated a serious fluctuation in environmental efficiency.From 1990 to 2000,the results indicate that most of the countries were inefficient although there had been an improvement in the values.Bangladesh had the highest environmental efficiency value of 6.32 according to the Group frontier.The least efficient country was Singapore and recorded an average EE value of 0.94.10 years onwards,environmental efficiency keeps increasing probably due to the reduction in the use of fossil fuel and the use of green technologies to reduce carbon emission.Australia recorded the highest efficiency score of 1.02 whiles Singapore recorded the least value of 0.93.Similar trend is recorded in 2018 as Bangladesh becomes the most efficient country with the average value of 1.08.Singapore yet again,recorded the least efficient score of 0.91.The study also investigates and compares convergence of environmental efficiency across East,South and Southeast Asia Pacific and Oceania whiles human capital amongst other variables such as green technology,urbanization,trade competitiveness and industrialization are also investigated as conditioning factors.The key findings were that Stochastic and absolute?-convergence were confirmed in all the regions.From the conditional?-convergence,we also found that green technology and human capital improved environmental efficiency.Industrialization positively impacts environmental efficiency in the Metafrontier but negatively on environmental efficiency in South,East Asia Pacific and Oceania in the Group Frontier.Urbanization hampers environmental efficiency and trade competitiveness as well reduces eco performance in all the regions save in East Asia.Finally,in achieving the objective four,the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Covid(MERS-COV)is investigated as a policy shock on environmental efficiency in the Asia Pacific.From a multi-country perspective,the effect of MERS-COV on environmental efficiency is assessed.This time,employing the Meta-Fronter Directional Distance Function(DDF),environmental efficiency is estimated for the selected countries between the periods of 2000 and2018,and the trend shows similar features with that of other DEA models used in achieving other objectives.Bangladesh,Australia,New Zealand,Japan and Pakistan were efficient whiles China and India were most inefficient for the stipulated period.The Difference-in-Difference(DID)estimation model is employed to assess the effect of the MERS-COV on environmental efficiency whiles DID-PSM was used as a robust.The results revealed that the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Covid(MERS-COV)reduces environmental efficiency in the Asia Pacific.To confirm this result,a robust analysis using CO₂as the dependent variable is done and the results confirm MERS-COV reduces environmental efficiency as it increased carbon emission during the period.To determine the possible cause of this,FDI,economic growth,urbanization,import and export are used to assess the impact of the shock on them.Economic growth has a positive relationship with the outbreak whiles foreign direct investment decreased.Export decreased as import improved.Urbanization reduced whiles human capital improved.