The integration of economies always attracts much attention from policymakers and researchers. This paper introduces a novel approach to evaluate potential economic and environmental gains from integrating economies. Based on aggregate production technology and directional distance functions, we regard all decision-making units as a whole, allowing free resource reallocation among units. The level of resource misallocation is identified by a structural measure, which is obtained by the difference between overall potential improvement and individual technical inefficiency. Taking China as an empirical example, possible economic output expansions are estimated at 43.2% and 10.1% under convex and nonconvex production technologies, respectively; potential pollution reductions are around 28.4% and 5.1% under convex and nonconvex production technologies, respectively. A significant disparity of structural inefficiencies is detected, indicating a high level of resource misallocation in China. Economic cooperation is vital to promote potential green gains for all provinces in China.

In this article, we measure the change in the green total factor productivity of the publication printing industry in 31 provinces in China between 2013 and 2019. An additive Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen total factor productivity indicator and an aggregate directional distance function measure are used to decompose a green total factor productivity into technical efficiency change, scale efficiency, and technological progress change. The results show that the average annual growth rate of China’s publication printing industry’s green total factor productivity during the sample period was -2.75%, indicating that the business situation of China’s publication printing industry is not optimistic under the premise of reducing carbon emissions in recent years. Among the main driving factors of green total factor change, scale efficiency change and technical efficiency change significantly reduce the level of green total factor productivity in China’s publication printing industry.