Pollution Generating Technologies and Environmental Efficiency

In this paper we study environmental efficiency within a pollution generating technology. Pollutants, or bads, are explicitly modeled by imposing technology properties of disposability and null-jointness. With data on firms from Swedish manufacturing, we investigate the potential to reduce emissions, and we take a closer look at the pulp and paper sector. Dividing the firms into “brown” and “green” firms, we find that there is significant potential, in both categories, to improve environmental efficiency, and hence lower emissions, of three air pollutants. Furthermore, we suggest that treating biofuels as entirely carbon neutral (as is common practice) may underestimate environmental efficiency scores and generate misleading policy implications