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.
Highlights
Agriculture plays a key role in satisfying food demand of the rapidly increasing world population, it constitutes one of the most important sectors for the economic development of countries
It is able to draw an exhaustive and updated picture of agricultural eco-efficiency in Europe that fills both temporal and spatial information gaps left by existing studies
For the first time, evidence on agricultural eco-efficiency in non-European Union transition economies, it emphasizes the promising performance of Albania, North Macedonia and Ukraine
Summary
Agriculture plays a key role in satisfying food demand of the rapidly increasing world population, it constitutes one of the most important sectors for the economic development of countries. Agriculture gives rise to negative externalities on the environment in terms of soil degradation, groundwater depletion, biodiversity loss and nutrient pollution (Pretty, 2008; Foley et al, 2011) This is true in recent years, because intensive farming practices have been largely put into practice to meet the increasing demand for fresh goods by developed countries (Oenema and Oenema, 2021; Domingues et al, 2020; Fabiani et al, 2020; Garcıa de Jalon et al, 2018). There is an increasing need by international decision makers for methodologies allowing an integrated assessment of both environmental and economic performance of agriculture, so that appropriate policies can be designed to favour an efficient use of natural resources in agricultural production
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
