America’s Most Sustainable Cities and Regions: Surviving the 21st Century Megatrends 1st ed. 2016 Edition

This book takes a non-parametric approach to analyze integrated measures of economic growth, energy use, and sustainability. Recently, many corporate leaders, policymakers, organizations, and individuals have become concerned about environmental issues, simultaneously paying attention to economic prosperity and the green growth of the economy. This book combines methodology and application. Methodologically, the book introduces non-parametric approaches—for instance, data envelopment analysis–discriminant analysis (DEA-DA) and data envelopment analysis–environmental assessment (DEA-EA). From a practical perspective, the book provides readers such as researchers and graduate students with models under the proposed non-parametric analytical frameworks and examines environmental issues and economic development. Included are application studies of these approaches using national-, regional-, and corporate-level datasets. Also discussed are policy implications and future directions of sustainable development based on empirical results.

Dr. Toshiyuki Sueyoshi had been a full professor at Department of Management, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, USA. He holds Ph.D. in Management and has worked for universities in USA, Japan, and other countries. His research interests cover operations research, management science, risk and policy analysis, energy industries, and environmental issues. Dr. Sueyoshi explores theory and methodologies for efficiency/performance assessment and applies them to various entities such as companies and plants. He has published more than 300 papers in academic journals and books and these are cited many times by researchers.

Dr. Mika Goto is a full professor at School of Environment and Society, Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan. She holds Ph.D. in Economics. Before joining the university, she worked for a research institute of electricity industry in Japan and conducted various research on energy and sustainability issues. Her research interests cover operations research, energy economics and policy, electricity industry, technology management, and sustainability. She has published many papers on efficiency analysis in academic journals and books.