Estimating Corporate Contributions towards Sustainability at the Aggregate Level of a Sector, Region or an Industry

This study presents a systematic method for assessing aggregate sustainability of firms at sector, region or industry level. The proposed method is based on the generalized sustainable value; it allows to aggregate data of individual firms to any group of firms in a specific sector, specialization, region, or any other group. The method is illustrated by two empirical applications of the Finnish crop and dairy sectors, where the benchmark technology is estimated by data envelopment analysis. Our efficiency assessment shows that the representative crop farm achieves only about a half of its potential output. Efficiency of the representative dairy farm is somewhat higher.