Analyzing the Impact of Subsidies on Beef Production Efficiency in Selected European Union Countries. A Stochastic Metafrontier Approach
利用2005-2012年爱尔兰、法国、英国和德国牛肉农场的面板数据，采用随机元前沿方法，研究了不同类型补贴对农场技术效率和前沿差距的影响，发现完全脱钩补贴有利于效率提升，而部分脱钩则可能阻碍技术进步。
The European Union Common Agricultural Policy reforms since the early 2000s allowed for the implementation of different types of agricultural subsidies, such as direct support in the form of decoupled and coupled payments, or agri‐environmental payments. As a result, there are significant differences in agricultural subsidies granted in each member state of the European Union. However, there is limited cross‐country comparative empirical evidence regarding the effects of the implementation of different levels and types of subsidies on farm efficiency. Using farm level data for beef farms in Ireland, France, Great Britain, and Germany between 2005 and 2012, we implement the stochastic metafrontier proposed by Huang et al. (2014) and attempt to correct for endogeneity applying the method in Shee and Stefanou (2015). Using these approaches, we contribute to the literature by consistently comparing cross‐country farm performance, as well as exploring the disaggregated effects of different types of subsidies on farm level technical efficiency and on the technology gaps. Our estimates show that although beef farms included operate on average close to the global frontier, there is scope to improve farm level managerial performance. However, they do operate close to the global frontier, although not on it. We also find evidence that implementing full decoupling benefited efficiency, whereas implementing partial decoupling might have hindered technical efficiency improvements for beef farms, as well as technology catch up.