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Chinese regional energy efficiency change and its determinants analysis: Malmquist index and Tobit model

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Abstract

China becomes the largest energy consumer in 2010 but its energy productivity is well below the world average. To meet China’s fast growing energy using, energy efficiency should be especially emphasized under China’s energy policy. This paper focuses on the regional level of energy efficiency change in China. And we analyze total factor energy efficiency for 30 Chinese provinces over the period 1998–2009 using Malmquist index method and Tobit analysis. The Malmquist estimation results suggest there is a dropping change trend of energy productivity growth. Chinese energy efficiency still faces with huge regional disparity, but the energy technical efficiency reflects convergence in the nationwide and west region. As a result of Tobit regression, we find that industrial structure, energy consumption structure and institutional factor have different influences on energy efficiency.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2010221040), Social Science Funds of Fujian Province (2011C042) and National Bureau of Statistics Fund (2011LD002) from China. We would like to thank the editor, associate editor, and reviewers for careful review and insightful comments, which have led to significant improvement of the article.

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Correspondence to Kuangnan Fang.

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Lv, W., Hong, X. & Fang, K. Chinese regional energy efficiency change and its determinants analysis: Malmquist index and Tobit model. Ann Oper Res 228, 9–22 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-012-1094-5

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