Dematerialization, Decoupling, and Productivity Change

Dematerialization: Variety, caution, and persistence.

Dematerialization, represented by declining consumption per GDP of energy or of goods, offers some hope for rising environmental quality with development. The declining proportion of income spent on staples as affluence grows, which income elasticity <1.0 measures, makes dematerialization widespread. Further, as learning improves efficiency of resource use, the intensity of environmental impact...

Total Factor Productivity Growth, Technical Change and Technical Efficiency Change in Asian Economies: Decomposition Analysis

The aim of this paper is to analyze total factor productivity (TFP) growth and its components in Asian countries applying Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) to the time series data of 44 Asian countries from 2000 to 2010. Using Battese and Coelli approach, TFP is divided into technical efficiency change and technical change. TFP decomposition using SFA method for the years 1998 to 2007 indicate...

Dematerialization Through Electronic Media?

While the traditional roles of the computer as a machine for scientific calculations, text editing, and graphic design are still significant, computers are increasingly perceived as means of accessing information and interacting with other people – i.e., as electronic media. The aim of this chapter is to analyze digital electronic media and their effects on environmental sustainability. Two fie...

Productivity, Computerization, and Skill Change

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta E C O N O M I C R E V I E W Third Quarter 2002 R obert Solow was, perhaps, the first to point out the anomaly between productivity growth and computerization. Indeed, he quipped that we see computers everywhere except in the productivity statistics. As we shall see, industries that have had the greatest investment in computers (namely, financial services) have ra...

Measuring Productivity Change In