Measurement and decomposition of China's real economic growth efficiency under environmental constraints

From the perspective of economic growth efficiency, this paper adopts the traditional DEA-Malmquist index method and the SBM-ML index method considering undesired output to measure the growth efficiency of China's real economy with or without environmental constraints. The results show that: (1) From 2005 to 2017, the total factor productivity of China's real economy increased by 2.7%, but under environmental constraints, the total factor productivity of China's real economy decreased by 0.6%, mainly due to the "drag" of the growth efficiency of the real economy by technological changes. Second, without considering the unintended output, 76.67% of the provinces and cities have improved the growth efficiency of the real economy, and 93.33% have made technological progress. Third, under environmental constraints, the total factor productivity and technological progress showed an upward trend only in the central region, while all other regions showed a downward trend to varying degrees. The descending range is east > northeast > west.