Satoshi Honma

Analyzing Japanese hotel efficiency.

This article uses both data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to analyze the efficiency of Japan’s major hotel companies between 2004 and 2008. This model includes four inputs and one output. DEA shows that more than half of these hotels use increasing returns to scale technologies and that they can become more efficient by enlarging their businesses. SFA efficiency scores are consistent with the DEA results. Finally, censored (Tobit) regressions are applied to investigate the determinants of the inefficiency of Japanese hotel companies. The results from DEA and SFA are consistent: being listed on the stock market has significant, positive effects on Japanese hotel efficiencies while the distance from an international airport has significant, negative effects on Japanese hotel efficiencies.

Total-factor Energy Efficiency for Sectors in Japan

In this article, we measure the energy efficiency of 17 sectors in the Japanese economy during 1998–2005 using data envelopment analysis (DEA), in which a total-factor framework is applied. We compute the total-factor energy efficiency, which is defined as the ratio of the target energy input suggested by the DEA to the actual energy inputs in a sector. Energy, labor, and capital are the three inputs, while the value added in each sector is the single output. Our major finding is that remarkably energy-inefficient sectors in the Japanese economy include energy-intensive industries (i.e., pulp and paper, chemical, cement and ceramics, and primary metal sectors) as well as agriculture, forestry and fishery, transportation and communication, and miscellaneous manufacturing. There is much room to improve energy efficiency in Japanese industrial sectors. Moreover, for 8 sectors, including energy-intensive industries, the inefficiency of energy use is much worse than that of other resource usage.

Efficient waste and pollution abatements for regions in Japan

This paper computes efficient industrial waste and air pollutants abatements for 47 regions in Japan for the period 1992–2002. The variable-returns-to-scale (VRS) data envelopment analysis (DEA) with a single output (real GDP) and seven inputs (labor, real public capital stock, real private capital stock, industrial waste, sulfur oxide, nitrogen oxide, and soot and dust) is used to compute target wastes of each region for each year. The efficient abatement ratios of each region in each year are obtained by comparing the actual to the target amount of a pollutant. Our major findings are: (1) Most regions in Japan have significant room to reduce their pollution since there is a wide gap between efficient and inefficient regions; (2) For each air pollutant, approximately 25–33% of Japans prefectures can reduce their output by more than 50% without harming regional GDP, and approximately one-third of prefectures can reduce industrial waste more than 30%; (3) Hokkaido is the least efficient region for all years studied and for all waste and pollutants, and target abatement ratios there drastically worsened in the last two sample years; (4) Tokyo, Saitama, Yamanashi, Shiga, Nara, and Tottori are efficient with respect to each type of industrial waste and pollution throughout the study period; (5) many regions in the bottom quartile with respect to real per capita income have significant room to reduce their waste and pollution output; and (6) many regions where energy-intensive industries dominate produce excessive amounts of waste and air pollution compared to other regions.

Environmental and Economic Efficiencies in the Asia-Pacific Region

This study computes the environmental efficiency of 31 Asia-Pacific countries and regions for the year 2007, using the super slacks-based measurement data envelopment analysis approach. Efficiency measure allows us to identify the reduction potential for carbon emissions. The author subsequently examined an environmental Kuznets curve type relationship between environmental efficiency and gross domestic product per capita. The empirical results show that a U-shaped relationship exists for the constant returns to scale model and the turning-point income is

Total-factor energy efficiency of regions in Japan

US3,824. However, for the variable returns to scale model, the author does not find a Kuznets- type relationship.