The agricultural sector is the primary economic sector. Therefore, the production factors released form the agricultural production process can be employed in the remaining economic sectors, thus generating additional gross value added. In addition, substantial public support is allocated for the agricultural sector. As in the European Union, these processes are regulated by the Common Agricultural Policy. Consequently, researches in the agricultural efficiency are of great importance from the economic standpoint. Indeed, the conventional methods of the efficiency analysis suffer from certain caveats. Accordingly it is important to employ the robust mathematical - statistical methods.
This paper aims to establish a methodology for analysis of the productive agricultural efficiency, based on the robust frontier and econometric methods. The paper discusses the following methodological issues: the measures of efficiency and models for efficiency analysis, methodology of the agricultural efficiency analysis. Some state-of-the art frontier methods are presented, namely partial frontiers, double bootstrap, conditional measures of efficiency, multi-directional efficiency analysis. As a result, the proposed methodology for the analysis of Lithuanian family farm efficiency enables to estimate both aggregate efficiency along with its determinants and the input-specific efficiencies. The aggregate efficiency was estimated by the means of the double bootstrap, whereas the multi-directional efficiency analysis was employed to estimate the input-specific efficiencies. The proposed methodology was employed to a sample of Lithuanian family farms.
Keywords: efficiency, family farms, data envelopment analysis, neoclassical methodology.
Baležentis, T.; Kriščiukaitienė, I. 2014. Žemės ūkio gamybinio efektyvumo vertinimas: samprata, modeliai ir taikymai: Mokslo studija. Vilnius: Lietuvos agrarinės ekonomikos institutas. 67 p.: iliustr., santr. angl. (online) ISBN 978-9955-481-47-8.