A Stochastic Frontier Model to Assess Agricultural Eco-efficiency of European Countries in 1990–2019

Abstract

This paper aims at assessing agricultural eco-efficiency of 40 European countries, including non-European Union and ex-USSR ones, in the period 1990–2019 (30 years). A stochastic frontier model with a panel translog specification is employed to allow technology to change in time and across countries, and both output elasticities and returns to scale to vary with input levels and time. Our study is original compared to existing ones in the literature because it considers the almost totality of European countries and focuses on a long and recent period. As such, it is able to draw an exhaustive and updatedpictureofagriculturaleco-efficiencyinEuropethatfillsbothtemporalandspatialinformationgapsleftbyexisting studies. In our results, countries with a definitely increasing eco-efficiency in the period 1990–2019 are Albania, Croatia, Iceland, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Portugal and Ukraine, while countries with a definitely decreasing eco-efficiency are Cyprus, Czechia, France, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Romania and Slovakia. All other countries have an approximately constant eco-efficiency in the period 1990–2019, ranging, in average, between 0.93 and 0.95, with the exception of two groups of countries: (i) Denmark, Italy, Serbia-Montenegro, Slovenia and Switzerland, which show a decline of eco-efficiency in recent years; (ii) Ireland and Latvia, which exhibit an upward inversion of the trend in the penultimate decade. These two groups of countries should be monitored in the near future to better establish whether the decline or the increase in eco-efficiency is temporary or permanent. Our study also provides, for the first time, evidence on agricultural eco-efficiency in non-European Union transition economies, specifically it emphasizes the promising performance of Albania, North Macedonia and Ukraine.

Spatial Distribution of Agricultural Eco-Efficiency and Agriculture High-Quality Development in China

“…The specific embodiment of the concept of agricultural ecological efficiency is to obtain as much agricultural output as possible with the smallest possible resource consumption and environmental pollution [19] and to ensure the quality of agricultural products [20]. Based on the concept of agricultural production efficiency, it not only needs to pay attention to maximizing agricultural economic benefits (desirable output) [21], but also minimizing resource consumption and environmental damage (undesirable output) to conform to the concept of low-carbon green agricultural development [22].…”

Assessment of agricultural productivity change at country level: A stochastic frontier approach

“…This formulation is identical to the most commonly adopted one in the literature (see the review in Laureti, 2006, Chapter 3, andin Magrini, 2021), with the difference that we added parameters η 1 , . .…”

Developing indicators to assess agricultural sustainability. Application to the Spanish context

“…-efficiency, described in ISO 14045 (ISO, 2012), is one of the most widely used concepts for the purposes of simultaneously assessing the economic and environmental aspects (Fusco et al, 2023;Li et al, 2023). This tool has been popularised by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCS) in 1992, in an attempt to link business to sustainable development (Coluccia et al, 2020), by assessing the efficiency with which ecological resources are used to meet human needs (Magrini, 2021;Picazo-Tadeo et al, 2011). In practice, two main category approaches are found for the modelling of ecoefficiency, the first is based on a ratio between desirable and undesirable outputs (ratio method), whereas in the second, eco-efficiency is assessed as the operational efficiency but taking into account both desirable and undesirable outputs as well as the influence of the inputs (Berre et al, 2015;Gancone et al, 2017;Pishgar-Komleh et al, 2021;Rosano Peña et al, 2018;Rybaczewska-Błazejowska and Gierulski, 2018;You and Zhang, 2016).…”