Heterogeneous Production Technology and Regional Green Total-factor Productivity Growth-An Analysis based on Meta-frontier and China's Provincial Panel Data of 2000-2012

China's different regions may not have the same green production technology due to the unbalanced regional development. Under the assumption of heterogeneous technology, this paper incorporates energy and environment factors into the framework of measurement of green productivity, and estimates the metafrontier green total factor productivity and its decomposition indexes of China's provinces and three major regions over 2000-2012 using non-parametric metafrontier theory, on basis of which the regional differences and dynamic trends are investigated. The empirical analysis results show that China's metafrontier green total factor productivity has reached 0.73% average growth rate promoted by technological change rather than efficiency improvement. Green technology of China's three major regions is remarkably heterogeneous. East region has been occupying the leading status of global frontier and represents the optimal green technology over the analysis period, while the production frontiers of the Central and West regions are deviating from the global green production frontier. It is dangerous that green production technology gap is further enlarged between the Central-West and the East.