TITLE:
Africa Countries’ Energy Efficiency: Evidence from a Directional Distance Function Approach
AUTHORS:
Alastaire Sèna Alinsato, Nassibou Bassongui, Calixe Bidossessi Alakonon
KEYWORDS:
Energy, Environmental Efficiency, Directional Distance Function, Africa
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.12 No.10,
October
29,
2021
ABSTRACT: Energy is recognized as the backbone of economic
development while at the same time it is the most contributor to global
warming. This paper aims to assess energy-efficiency of a sample of African
countries over the period from 1971 to 2014. Through a directional distance function
approach, we estimated both the energy efficiency and the environmental energy
efficiency scores in the sample. The results showed that ignoring the
undesirable output, i.e. dioxide carbon emissions associated with environmental
degradation, overestimates countries’ energy
inefficiency. Besides, from a non-parametric approach, we shed light on
the sensitivity of countries environmental energy efficiency to the income
level. Our findings confirmed the sensitivity of environmental-energy
efficiency to the Kuznets curve hypothesis. In particular, countries with
high-level income are the most environmental-energy efficient in the sample
over the period of study. The paper ends with some policy implications and some
research perspectives.