The trends of technical, environmental and resource efficiency across agricultural sectors of european countries

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse economic, environmental and resource use efficiency in the European Union agriculture. Specifically, we focus on selected countries specific with rather similar output mix. Different frontier models are defined to analyse the underlying trends in efficiency across the European countries. The data come from the World Input-Output Database and cover the period of 1995– 2009. Frontier models assume weak disposability and consider such variables as labour, capital, energy, land, materials, water, gross value added, and carbon emission. Slovenia, Belgium, France, Austria and Poland appeared to be the most technically efficient countries. Bulgaria, the Netherlands, and Romania also gained considerable competitiveness in terms of eco-efficiency and resource use efficiency thus appearing among most efficient countries under frontier models with undesirable outputs. Latvia, Czech Republic, Estonia, and Hungary emerged as the least efficient countries in terms of agricultural production under all specifications of the frontier models. JEL codes: C44, Q15.