Accounting for animal health in efficiency analysis: An application to Swedish dairy farms
提出将动物健康作为弱可处置产出纳入生产效率分析，利用瑞典奶牛场数据发现，考虑动物健康后平均效率从0.900升至0.973，且动物健康的影子价格多为正，表明农户愿以产量换取健康。
Abstract Poor animal health is a central concern in modern livestock production. Despite the necessity to incorporate animal health in efficiency analysis, the theoretical and empirical developments are limited on this subject. This article appropriately characterizes the axiomatic properties of animal health within a production framework. We treat animal health as a weakly disposable output with characteristics of an input and an output, which permits computing animal health‐adjusted efficiency measures and shadow prices of animal health. The application considers 980 observations of Swedish dairy farms over the years 2009–2016. We use a Benefit‐of‐the‐Doubt approach for assessing animal health, which captures its multiple dimensions with weights being optimized for each farmer. Applying a random sample‐split procedure within a Data Envelopment Analysis framework, we statistically verify the extent to which inclusion of animal health in the production framework changes the efficiency estimates. The results show that including animal health in production analysis increases the average efficiency estimates from 0.900 to 0.973, a finding that largely also holds in a statistical sense. The shadow prices of animal health are mostly positive, which indicates a general willingness to accept lower levels of production for higher levels of animal health. Our findings suggest the importance of incorporating animal health into efficiency analysis.