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In this paper we propose a stochastic formulation of the materials balance condition which imposes physical constraints on production technologies. The estimation of the model involves a composed error term structure that is commonly applied in the literature on stochastic frontier analysis of productive effciency. Moreover, we discuss how OLS, maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods can be used to estimate the proposed model. In contrast to previous approaches our model allows to estimate the physical limitations to production possibilities in the presence of statistical noise and depends on substantially weaker data requirements. We demonstrate the applicability of our new approach by estimating the materials balance cndition for SO2 and CO2 using a sample of fossil-fueled power plants in the United States.

On June 25, 2013, President Obama announced his plan to introduce carbon dioxide emission standards for electricity generation. This paper proposes an efficiency analysis approach that addresses which mission rates (and standards) would be feasible if the existing generating units adopt best practices. A new efficiency measure is introduced and further decomposed to identify different sources' contributions to emission rate improvements. Estimating two Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models - the well-known joint production model and the new materials balance model - on a dataset consisting of 160 bituminous-fired generating units, we find that the average generating unit's electricity-to-carbon dioxide ratio is 15.3 percent below the corresponding best-practice ratio. Further examinations reveal that this discrepancy can largely be attributed to non-discretionary factors and not to managerial inefficiency. Moreover, even if the best practice ratios could be implemented, the generating units would not be able to comply with the EPA's recently proposed carbon dioxide standard.

In this paper we analyze the economic effects of implementing EPA's newly proposed regulations for carbon dioxide (CO2) on existing U.S. coal-fired power plants using nonparametric methods on a sample of 144 electricity generating units. Moreover, we develop an approach for evaluating the economic gains from averaging emission intensities among the utilities' generating units, compared to implementing unit-specific performance standards. Our results show that the implementation of flexible standards leads to up to 2.7 billion dollars larger profits compared to the uniform standards. Moreover, we find that by adopting best practices, current profits can be maintained even if an intensity standard of 0.88 tons of CO2 per MWh is implemented. However, our results also indicate a trade-off between environmental and profit gains, since aggregate CO2 emissions are higher with emission intensity averaging than with uniform standards.

This study explores the reduction potential of greenhouse gases for major pollution emitting countries of the world using nonparametric productivity measurement methods and directional distance functions. In contrast to the existing literature we apply optimization methods to endogenously determine optimal directions for the efficiency analysis. These directions represent the compromise of output enhancement and emissions reduction. The results show that for reasonable directions the adoption of best-practices would lead to sizable emission reductions in a range of about 20 percent compared to current levels.

Diese Dissertation umfasst 4 ökonomische Forschungsarbeiten, die sich mit der Analyse der Effizienz von Entscheidungseinheiten bezüglich der Produktion unerwünschter Outputs befassen. Diese Arbeiten sind durch die Herausforderungen im Rahmen des Phänomens des Klimawandels motiviert. Eine Analyse der Automobile auf dem deutschen Fahrzeugmarkt wird vorgestellt, welche verschiedene Fahrzeuggruppen vergleicht und dabei die Produktion von Kohlenstoffdioxid berücksichtigt. Darüber hinaus wird ein Netzwerkmodell vorgeschlagen, welches die Trennung von Produktions- und Vermeidungsineffizienzen ermöglicht, sowie ein Ansatz zur endogenen Bestimmung der Richtungsvektoren der direktionalen Distanzfunktion entwickelt. Desweiteren wird eine Analyse der Auswirkungen des Kyoto-Protokolls auf die makroökonomische Produktivität europäischer Länder durchgeführt.

In this paper we present a new approach to evaluate the environmental efficiency of decision making units. We propose a model that describes a two-stage process consisting of a production and an end-of-pipe abatement stage with the environmental efficiency being determined by the efficiency of both stages. Taking the dependencies between the two stages into account, we show how nonparametric methods can be used to measure environmental efficiency and to decompose it into production and abatement efficiency. For an empirical illustration we apply our model to an analysis of U.S. power plants.

We conduct an empirical analysis of the technical efficiency of cars sold in Germany in 2010. The analysis is performed using traditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) as well as directional distance functions (DDF). The approach of DDF allows incorporating the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions as an environmental goal in the efficiency analysis. A frontier separation approach is used to gain deeper insight for different car classes and regions of origin. Natural gas driven cars and sports-utility-vehicles are also treated as different groups. The results show that the efficiency measurement is significantly influenced by the incorporation of carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, we find that there is indeed a trade-off between technological performance and environmental performance.