TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY IN ORGANIC AND CONVENTIONAL FARMING: EVIDENCE FROM ITALIAN CEREAL FARMS

A stochastic frontier production model was applied to estimate technical efficiency in a sample of Italian organic and conventional cereal farms. The main purpose was to assess which production technique revealed higher efficiency. Statistical tests on the common production function model suggested that the two cultivation methods might lie on different frontiers. Separate analyses of two sub-samples (93 and 138 observations for organic and conventional farms, respectively) found that conventional farms were significantly more efficient than organic farms, with respect to their specific technology (0.902 vs. 0.831). Analysis also estimated that efficiency plays a crucial role into the factors affecting productivity in the organic process. Some policy implications can be drawn from these findings

Ultra-efficient Cooling in Ferromagnet-Superconductor Microrefrigerators

A promising scheme for electron microrefrigeration based on ferromagnet-superconductor contacts is presented. In this setup, cooling power densities up to 600 nW/$\mu$m$^2$ can be achieved leading to electronic temperature reductions largely exceeding those obtained with existing superconductor-normal metal tunnel contacts. Half-metallic CrO$_2$/Al bilayers are indicated as ideal candidates for the implementation of the device.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Applied Physics Letter

Parametric Estimation Of Technical And Scale Efficiencies In Italian Citrus Farming

Ray (1998) has proposed a model for estimating scale efficiency using a parametric approach. Following this methodology, a scale efficiency measure is obtained from the estimated parameters of the production frontier function and from the estimated scale elasticities. This study aims to estimate technical and scale efficiencies achieved by the Italian citrus fruit-growing farms. A stochastic frontier production model is considered in order to estimate technical and scale efficiencies. The analysis is expected to estimate the role of both technical and scale efficiencies in conditioning productivity. Particular attention is put on determining the (technical and scale) inefficiency effects associated with a set of structural and environmental variables that should affect efficiency and on the relationship between technical and scale efficiency scores. Empirical findings suggest that the greater portion of overall inefficiency in the sample might depend on producing below the production frontier than on operating under an inefficient scale. Indeed, room for improving technical efficiency is, on average, larger (29%) than the margin due to scale inefficiency (18.2%). Results also indicate a weak relationship between the two efficiency measures.Technical efficiency Scale efficiency Stochastic Frontier Analysis Citrus farming Italy

Technical Efficiency in Organic Farming: An Application on Italian Cereal Farms Using a Parametric Approach

A stochastic frontier production model was applied to estimate technical efficiency in a sample of Italian organic and conventional cereal farms. The main purpose was to assess which production technique revealed higher efficiency. Statistical tests on the pool sample model suggested that differences between the two cultivation methods were significant from a technological viewpoint. Separate analyses of two sub-samples (93 and 138 observations for organic and conventional farms, respectively) found that conventional farms were significantly more efficient than organic farms, with respect to their specific technology (0.892 vs. 0.825). This implies that organic (conventional) cereal farmers could increase their income to 99.19 /ha (40.95 /ha). Analysis also estimated that land was the technical input with the highest elasticity for both technologies. Furthermore, findings indicated that 63.7% of the differentials between observed and best-practice output was explained by technical inefficiency for the conventional group, while this value was close to unity for organic farms. Some policy implications can be drawn from these findings.organic farming, comparison analysis, cereal-growing, technical efficiency, stochastic frontier production models, Crop Production/Industries, C61, Q18,

A Comparative Analysis of Organic and Conventional Farming trough the Italian FADN

This paper presents some results from a wider research on economic and environmental sustainability of organic farming. It aims to compare organic and conventional farming in order to identify some of the main differences between those groups of farms that participated in the official Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN)-2003. The study is organized in two sections. The first part, after a brief literature review of the most recent statistical methodologies applied to identify the two similar groups of farms, presents some key economic variables (production, costs and revenues) and the most widely-used structural, economic and balance sheet indexes. The second part describes findings from a case study on the Italian fruit-growing sector. A non-parametric input-oriented frontier analysis (Data Envelopment Analysis, DEA)was used to evaluate which technique makes better use of their disposable productive inputs. Findings show that organic farmers can (partially) overcome the productivity gap (with respect to conventional ones) by more efficient use of their inputs (with respect to their own frontier)

Using The Censored Gamma Distribution for Modeling Fractional Response Variables with an Application to Loss Given Default

Regression models for limited continuous dependent variables having a non-negligible probability of attaining exactly their limits are presented. The models differ in the number of parameters and in their flexibility. Fractional data being a special case of limited dependent data, the models also apply to variables that are a fraction or a proportion. It is shown how to fit these models and they are applied to a Loss Given Default dataset from insurance to which they provide a good fit