The impact of EU accession on farms' technical efficiency in Hungary

Abstract

In this article the stochastic frontier analysis method is used to evaluate the technical efficiency of Hungarian farms before and after accession to the European Union (EU), and to investigate the efficiency determinants. The results show that EU membership has reversed the pre-accession process of efficiency decrease. But the other side of the coin is that access to higher post-accession subsidies contributes to lower efficiency of Hungarian farmers. The other remarkable finding is a seeming scarcity of labour on farms, which constrains their production and efficiency. The Hungarian government may therefore have to design specific national policies if its aim is to promote a farming system that uses labour and at the same time is competitive.

The Structural Transformation in Central and Eastern European Agriculture

“…Bojnec et al (2014) The EU accession has influenced the agriculture in the CEECs in many ways. Bakucs et al (2010) confirm that the EU accession had positive effect on the technical efficiency in the Hungarian agriculture. Bojnec and Fertő (2012) argue that EU enlargement has positive impacts on agri-food trade in the CEECs.…”

“…There is a growing literature on the impacts of agricultural subsidies on farmers' technical efficiency in the CEECs (e.g. Bakucs et al 2010, Bojnec and Fertő, 2013, Bojnec and Latruffe 2009, Dourain and Latruffe 2011. Mala 2011) supporting rather the negative views on subsidies.…”

Change in the production efficiency of European specialized milk farming

“…The important fact is that the Common Agricultural Policy is a strong economic determinant of the technical efficiency in the EU. The current subsidies and regulations affect the efficiency of farms (Bakucs et al 2010). The question about investment subsidies has not been answered enough.…”

Compétitivité, productivité et efficacité dans les secteurs agricole et agroalimentaire

“…Cette approche est également suivie dans des études examinant l'incidence du soutien public l"agriculture sur l"efficacité des exploitations, sur la base de données au niveau de l"exploitation. Procédant à une régression sur les scores d"efficience par exploitation, les chercheurs incluent généralement comme variable des politiques : le niveau des aides perçues par les exploitations (par exemple, Rezitis et al, 2003 ;Emvalomatis et al, 2008), ou la part du revenu agricole provenant d"un soutien public (par exemple, Giannakas et al, 2001), ou encore un ratio entre le montant des aides et le niveau de la production ou la marge brute pour éviter les effets de taille (par exemple, Hadley, 2006 ;Zhu et al, 2008aZhu et al, et 2008bBojnec et Latruffe, 2009 ;Fogarasi et Latruffe, 2009 ;Latruffe et al, 2009 ;Bakucs et al, 2010). L"incidence sur l"efficience technique est presque uniformément négative dans toute la littérature : Giannakas et al (2001) Lachaal (1994) constate que l"efficience technique annuelle est à son plus bas niveau lorsque les dépenses publiques de soutien au secteur laitier sont les plus élevées.…”