Environmentally sensitive productivity growth and its decompositions in China: a metafrontier Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index approach

The metafrontier Malmquist–Luenberger (MML) index was used to measure the environmentally sensitive productivity and analyze its decompositions on China’s regional productivity growth. Using the MML index, the environmental undesirable outputs and regional heterogeneities were analyzed simultaneously. The empirical results showed that although China had accomplished rapid growth rate of GDP over the last decade, environmentally sensitive productivity has been relatively constant with a low growth rate. The productivity growth is driven mainly by technology innovation. Regarding the regional differences, the eastern area showed the highest productivity growth, whereas the central and western areas showed productivity deterioration. Some implications and suggestions on the regional differences are proposed based on the empirical results.