This paper deals with energy efficiency examined through an integrated model that links energy with environment, technology, and urbanisation as related areas. Our main goal is to discover how efficiently developed countries use primary energy and electricity (secondary energy). We additionally want to find out how the inclusion of environmental care and renewable energy capacity affects efficiency. For that purpose, we set up an output-oriented BCC data envelopment analysis that employs a set of input variables with non-negative values to calculate the efficiency scores on minimising energy use and losses as well as environmental emissions for a sample of 30 OECD member states during the period from 2001 to 2018. We develop a couple of baseline models in which we find that countries have mean inefficiency margins of 16.1% for primary energy and from 10.8 to 13.5% for electricity. The results from the extended models show that taking care about environment does not affect efficiency in general, while the reliance on energy produced from renewable sources does slightly reduce it.

We examine energy efficiency in the European Union (EU) using an integrated model that connects labor and capital as production factors with energy consumption to produce GDP with a limited amount of environmental emissions. The model is a linear output-oriented BCC data envelopment analysis (DEA) that employs variables with non-negative values to calculate efficiency scores for a sample of 28 EU member states in the period 2010–2018. We assume variable returns to scale (VRS) considering the natural inclination of countries to adopt technologies that allow them to produce higher outputs over extended periods of time, which we observed through the trends of increasing labor productivity and decreasing energy intensity over the analyzed period. The average EU inefficiency margin in the sample period is 16.0%, with old member states being significantly more efficient (4.2%) than new member states (29.5%). Energy efficiency management does not improve over time, especially in new member states that had substantially worse efficiency by 2018 than in 2010. New member states could increase energy efficiency through the liberalization of the energy market, the support of energy-saving and technologically advanced industries, and the introduction of measures aimed at increasing the productivity levels in the economy.

This paper is about energy as viewed through an integrated model that links energy with environment, technology and urbanisation as related areas. Our goal is to empirically investigate the (in)efficient energy use across 30 developed OECD member states during the period from 2001 to 2018. For that purpose, we set up an output-oriented BCC data envelopment analysis that employs a set of input variables with non-negative values to calculate the efficiency scores on minimising energy use and losses as well as environmental emissions. We develop a couple of baseline models for primary energy and secondary energy (electricity) in which we find that countries have mean inefficiency margins of 16.1 per cent for primary energy and from 10.8 to 13.5 per cent for electricity. Then, we extend the baseline models by adding environment as an important closely related concept and confirm the consistency of the baseline findings. In the context of this analysis, however, the inefficiency scores, on the one hand, point out to a mismatch in the utilisation of the inputs to produce efficiency but, on the other hand, they uncover a hidden potential to increasy efficiency through re-allocation under constant inputs.

The goal of this study is to examine the impact of remittance inflow on inflation using the System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) and Dumitrescu-Hurlin Granger causality approach in countries from Central and Eastern Europe over the period 1994 to 2019. As the levels of economic and financial development vary considerably across these countries and some of them are member states of the European Union (EU), we split them into two more homogenous groups - EU member states and non-EU countries. The application of the SGMM approach reveals that remittances have a negative and significant impact on inflation in the non-EU countries, whereas they exert positive impact in the EU member states and in the whole region overall. The Granger causality test shows a unidirectional causal relationship between remittances and inflation in all country groups, whereas the existence of a positive causal relationship from remittances to inflation has been established in twelve countries.

This study analyses the fiscal and monetary determinants of inflation in 27 European Union (EU) member states between 2010 and 2023, with a comparative focus on “old” (primarily Western European) and “post-socialist” (mostly Eastern European) members. A dynamic panel estimation based on the System Generalised Method of Moments (System GMM) is employed to address endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity. Key macroeconomic variables considered include wages, unemployment, interest rates, exchange rates, government spending, tax revenues, trade openness, and government debt growth. The findings show stronger inflation persistence in post-socialist members, while wages exert greater upward pressure on prices in older members. Unemployment displays a weaker inverse link with inflation in older EU countries, whereas government spending exhibits a negative association with inflation, suggesting that fiscal tightening is not uniformly disinflationary. Tax revenues, meanwhile, have a positive but insignificant effect. The results also indicate that exchange rate depreciation drives higher inflation in post-socialist members, while higher interest rates reduce inflation across both groups. The contribution of this paper lies in its comparative analysis of old and post-socialist EU members, its incorporation of inflation persistence, and the application of a robust dynamic specification. The evidence suggests that tailored rather than uniform policy measures are required to safeguard price stability and support sustainable growth across the EU.