Eco-efficiency and convergence

In pursuit of welfare, environmental issues constitute one important dimension to be taken into account in assessing the welfare along with the economic and social indicators. There has been a lively discussion about measures of social welfare beyond GDP articulated by Stiglitz Report (Stiglitz et al, 2009) which can be viewed as a summation of the earlier efforts to deal with those challenges. This study concentrates on environmental aspects of economic growth in European countries and the changes undergone in the period of 2000 – 2010. Time series of obtained eco-efficiency scores from SBM models were used to infer on the ?- and ß-convergence analysed in line with the classical econometric approach. Results suggest that except of the post crisis disruption a process of convergence with respect to eco-efficiency has been taking place in European countries.