Examining eco-efficiency convergence of European Industries.The existence of technological spillovers within a metafrontier framework

European policies regarding global warming have been outspread the last few decades with many initiatives for industrial production process. In this paper we model eco-efficiency performance under a meta-frontier framework for 14 industries from the manufacturing sector from 27 European countries over the 1995-2011 period. The utilization of NOx, SOx, CO2, CH4, N2O, CO, NMVOC and NH3 as undesirable outputs and GVA as the desirable represent the impact of of economic activities on the environment. In the first stage, we estimate eco-efficiency using the conventional Directional Distance Function (DDF) as well as the non-radial DDF approach. In the second stage of analysis, we investigate the existence of conditional and unconditional convergence according to several methodologies. Our eco-efficiency estimates provide a distinct behavior for energy intensive European industries. Moreover, a decline occurs for the majority of them. In addition, our results using distributional dynamics approach and the recent approach of Philips and Sul (2007) supports the non-convergence hypothesis and the creation of distinct clubs. Finally, the establishment of a catch up index indicate an increase in a speed of convergence.