Production Risk and Technical Efficiency in Organic and Conventional Agriculture – The Case of Arable Farms in Germany
研究了德国有机与常规耕地农场的生产风险和技术效率，发现产出波动主要由生产风险导致，土地和劳动力是风险增加投入，资本、种子成本和土壤质量则降低风险。
Abstract This paper quantifies the importance of production risk and technical efficiency as two possible sources of production variability in German organic and conventional farming. Determinants of production risk and inefficiency are investigated based on a combination of Just and Pope’s stochastic production framework and a Stochastic Frontier Analysis. The empirical analysis is conducted using a balanced panel of farm records from 1999/2000 to 2006/2007 on 37 organic and conventional arable farms, respectively. Euclidian‐Distance‐Matching is used to identify for each organic farm a conventional counterpart with similar structural features. Results indicate that output variability in both production technologies is mainly caused by production risk. Land and labour are identified as risk‐increasing inputs in both farm types whereas higher capital endowment, seed costs and soil quality have risk‐reducing effects.