Research On Improvement Space Of Carbon Productivity And Its Determinants

As one of the main threats to human sustainable development, climate change has become the focus of the world’s concern. With the rapid economic growth, BRICS, at the special historical stage of development, exhaust a large amount of carbon dioxide, facing tremendous pressure from the developed countries. However, not yet have BRICS get rid of the lack of material wealth, economic development remains the central part of national construction. Faced with the dilemma, BRICS have to resolve the following issue:How to improve the level of carbon productivity, develop "Low-Carbon economy", achieve a "win-win" of economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions. By using the data sample from 1996 to 2011 of 5 BRICS countries and 30 countries of QECD, this paper structures and decomposes improvement space of carbon productivity, and researches its determinants.Firstly, based on SBM-super-DEA model, this paper evaluates and contrasts the sample countries’total factor carbon productivity. The results show that with the difference degrades, these countries’TFP appears convergence to some degree. Further analysis of group difference finds that although OECD scores higher than BRICS, the latter have a greater improvement. Since financial crisis, China’s TFP has been reducing rapidly. On the contrary, there remains an upward trend in G7.Secondly, by using slacks, determined by SBM model, this paper structures and decomposes improvement space of carbon productivity. The results show that to some degree, there is negative correlation between improvement space of carbon productivity and total factor carbon productivity. In the former structure, unlike the poor economic output of BRICS, the reason why some G7 countries’ huge improvement space is the large improvement space of CO2 emission reduction.Finally, Based on stochastic frontier cost model, the further analysis on determinants of improvement space shows:potential improvement rate of CO2 and GDP can be inhibited by the increase of GDP per capital, government capacity and energy structure; On the whole, in addition to the above factors, the increase of human capital, capital-energy ratio and decrease of capital-labor ratio can remarkably reduce potential improvement rate of carbon productivity. Therefore, at the present stage, BRICS should put the plan of "double national income" into practice, intensify government capacity, adjust the energy structure, promote technological progress, and accelerate the transformation of development pattern and industrial restructuring. Ultimately, BRICS have to adhere to the path of green development, promote low carbon economic transformation and build an upgraded version of Low-Carbon economy.