Sustainability and firm performance : evidence from corportate and farm level

This thesis approaches the question of sustainability and firm performance. In the contemporary business model, firm performance measurement must take into account not only economic profits, but also environmental and social issues, in order to ensure the sustainable development of the firm. By using advanced methodological approaches and exploring sustainability through a holistic view, this thesis contributes significantly to sustainability performance literature. Three specific objectives have been fulfilled through three papers that constitute the main body of the present thesis. The first article aims to answer whether profitable business is compatible with balanced sustainability by investigating the relationship between the economic, social, environmental and governance performance for a sample of global firms. A canonical vine (C-vine) copula is used for this purpose. Results show the existence of a fairly strong positive relationship between economic, social and environmental performance. The corporate governance dimension is shown to have a weak relationship with the rest of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions. Important policy implications are derived from these results. The second paper investigates the relationships among performance dimensions associated with corporate social responsibility focusing on the U.S. electric utility sector. Results of a statistical copula approach suggest that economic performance of utilities is compatible with environmental, social, and governance performance. The CSR model has the potential to help U.S. electric utilities become better corporate citizens while also obtaining higher economic profits. The third paper investigates farms’ stochastic production technology as the interaction of three-main types of sub-technologies that govern, respectively, the production of agricultural commodities, environmental pollution, and social outputs of agricultural activities. The model is empirically implemented through a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. The empirical application is based on a survey of Catalan arable crop farms. On average, we find our sample farms to display high technical and social performance, while they show relatively poor environmental performance.Esta tesis aborda la cuestión de la sostenibilidad y el rendimiento de la empresa. En el modelo de negocio contemporáneo, la medición del rendimiento de la empresa debe tener en cuenta no solo las ganancias económicas, sino también las cuestiones ambientales y sociales, para garantizar el desarrollo sostenible de la empresa. Mediante el uso de enfoques metodológicos avanzados y la exploración de la sostenibilidad a través de una visión holística, esta tesis contribuye significativamente a la literatura sobre la sostenibilidad. Tres objetivos específicos se han cumplido a través de tres documentos que constituyen el cuerpo principal de la presente tesis. El primer artículo tiene como objetivo responder si el negocio rentable es compatible con la sostenibilidad equilibrada, mediante la investigación de la relación entre el desempeño económico, social, medio-ambiental y de gobernanza de una muestra de empresas globales. Un modelo canónico de viña de copulas (C-vine) se usa para este propósito. Los resultados muestran la existencia de una relación positiva bastante fuerte entre el desempeño económico, social y ambiental. Se muestra que la dimensión de gobernanza corporativa tiene una relación débil con el resto de las dimensiones de la responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC). Importantes implicaciones de política se derivan de estos resultados. El segundo articulo investiga las relaciones entre las dimensiones de desempeño asociadas con la responsabilidad social corporativa que se centran en el sector de servicios eléctricos de los EE. UU. Los resultados obtenidos del análisis de las cópulas sugieren que el desempeño económico de las empresas eléctricas es compatible con el desempeño ambiental, social y de gobernanza. El modelo de la RSC tiene el potencial de ayudar a que los servicios eléctricos de los EE. UU. Se conviertan en mejores ciudadanos corporativos mientras se logran mayores beneficios económicos. El tercer trabajo investiga la tecnología de producción estocástica de las explotaciones agrícolas como una interacción de tres sub-tecnologías que gobiernan, respectivamente, la producción de productos agrícolas, la contaminación ambiental y los productos sociales de las actividades agrícolas. El modelo se implementa empíricamente a través de un modelo de Análisis Envolvente de Datos (DEA). La aplicación empírica se basa en una encuesta de explotaciones de cultivos en la región de Cataluña. En promedio, encontramos que nuestras explotaciones muestran un alto desempeño técnico y social, mientras que muestran un desempeño ambiental relativamente pobre

Valuing social sustainability in agriculture: An approach based on social outputs' shadow prices

Interest in sustainability has gained ground among practitioners, academics and policy-makers due to growing stakeholders' awareness of environmental and social concerns. This is particularly true for agriculture. However, relatively little research has been conducted on the quantification of social sustainability and the contribution of social issues to the agricultural production efficiency. This paper proposes a framework based on state-contingent outputs to compute shadow prices of social outputs. Our methodological approach is based on the directional distance function and illustrated using a farm-level dataset from a sample of Catalan arable crop farms in 2015. Our results indicate that in the sample of 180 farms included in the analysis, efficiency scores are relatively high for the three alternative states of the nature considered in our state-contingent analysis. In addition, our findings show that social outputs' shadow prices are positive, indicating that producing more social outputs is considered as great value to the farm. For the efficient farms, the social outputs' shadow prices are contingent upon on the state of nature, in a way that social outputs' shadow prices increase with the improvement in crop growth conditions. These results have implications in terms of EU farm payment redistribution.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Corporate Sustainable Development. Revisiting the Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility Dimensions

With rising stakeholder concerns over sustainable development, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become key for the business community, moving the business model beyond financial performance to a new voluntary paradigm based on natural resource conservation, social welfare, stakeholder engagement and economic performance. This article aims to answer whether profitable business is compatible with balanced sustainability by investigating the relationship between the economic, social, environmental and governance performance for a sample of global firms. A canonical vine (C‐vine) copula is used for this purpose. Results show the existence of a fairly strong positive relationship between economic, social and environmental performance. The corporate governance dimension is shown to have a weak relationship with the rest of the CSR dimensions. Important policy implications are derived from these results. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environmentinfo:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Measuring farm productivity under production uncertainty

This research introduces a novel empirical application to the assessment of farm productivity growth. While the existing research on productivity change has primarily focussed on ex post output observations, it has been shown that ignoring production uncertainty can lead to unreliable results. Using a state-contingent framework to represent the stochastic production environment, we extend the recent line of research that merged the state-contingent approach and efficiency measurement to productivity change using the Malmquist and Luenberger productivity indices. Using a balanced panel of 117 arable crop farms surveyed in 2011 and 2015, we show through the study results that productivity decreased, with technological regress being the major source of productivity change. Differences in productivity change between nonstochastic and stochastic modelling show the relevance to consider the state-contingent framework when assessing farms' productivity

Do agri-environment measures help improve environmental and economic efficiency? Evidence from Bavarian dairy farmers

This study presents an innovative empirical application to the assessment of agri-environment measures on environmental and economic efficiency. Using a multi-equation representation with desirable technology and its accompanying undesirable by-production technology, we investigate the effects of agri-environment measures on farm-level environmental and economic efficiency. A combination of propensity score matching and a difference-in-difference approach is used to estimate the policy effect. The application focuses on a balanced sample of Bavarian dairy farms surveyed between 2013 and 2018. Results suggest that agri-environment schemes do not alter farms’ economic efficiency, whereas environmental efficiency does not seem to be stimulated by schemes participation

Assessing the impact of agri-environmental payments on green productivity in Germany

This study offers a novel empirical application for assessing the impact of agri-environment schemes (AES) on the performance of farms. The existing evidence about the impact of these schemes considering environmental and economic aspects equally is still limited. Therefore, our objective is to contribute to the literature on the impact evaluation of AES by considering three important aspects in our empirical analysis. First, the performance of farms is proxied by an indicator that incorporates environmental externalities into production activities. Second, our empirical analysis focuses on a sample of Bavarian dairy farms covering the period 2013–2018, thus, we can evaluate the effectiveness of agri-environmental schemes in one of Germany's leading agricultural and forestry regions during the latest programming period. Finally, in an effort to increase robustness, we employ an improved version of the Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index, which enables us to get around some of the shortcomings of the original index. The obtained results suggest that agri-environment payments have a limited effect on improving farm-level green productivity

Measuring technical efficiency of Spanish pig farming: Quantile stochastic frontier approach

The pig meat production plays a significant role in the Spanish agrofood system. The assessment of the efficiency performance with which farmers are operating is necessary to define adequate policy and management strategies. In this context, this study aimed to determine the technical efficiency (TE) performance of pig farms and to examine the key factors that may affect the production system in Spain. To do so, the analysis relies on the quantile stochastic frontier model using a sample of Spanish pig farms. Results show a significant difference between production frontier parameters across the selected quantiles, which support the relevance of using the quantile regression approach. The optimal quantile for the stochastic frontier indicates an average TE level of 75%. In addition, empirical findings suggest that pig farmers in Spain give more importance to the adoption of high technology to improve their economic and technical performance as well as their competitiveness at the European pig market.Postprint (author's final draft

What matters most in determining European farmers’ participation in agri-environmental measures? A systematic review of the quantitative literature

Successful implementation of Europe’s agri-environmental policies faces various obstacles, several of which are closely linked to participation. Effectively increasing adoption of agri-environmental-climate measures (AECM) requires a deeper understanding of farmers’ motives. Various case-study research has targeted ex-post studies but offers context-specific recommendations. Earlier literature reviews provide certain insights, but have not yet clarified how the evidence on adoption can be optimally applied to AECM design. We explore farmer decision-making by synthetizing results from three decades of ex-post empirical studies on AECM adoption in Europe. Our approach applies a theoretically informed participation framework that offers practical insights for AECM design. We systematically scrutinize how different stage-specific constructs, grouped into ‘alignment’, ‘opportunity’, ‘engagement’, and ‘contracting’, influence farmer decisions. We identify eight determinants of participation and 38 variables capturing their contribution to decision-making. Variables explaining the role of social contexts and satisfaction with contract design are seldom observed but prove significant in around 60 percent of cases. Conversely, variables capturing the relevance of AECM to farmers and the opportunity of participation are frequently included, but often ineffective in explaining uptake. Enhancing the alignment of the measures with farmers’ needs encourages adoption, but excessive alignment carries the risk of self-selection bias toward baseline-complying agents, which likely jeopardizes AECM additionality. Our findings highlight how crucial it is for adoption studies to properly account for farmers’ opportunity costs and self-selection bias. We draw policy-makers’ attention to the importance of carefully considering all four constructs during policy design

The Impact of Information and Communication Technology on the Technical Efficiency of Smallholder Vegetable Farms in Shandong of China

Farmers have started to adopt Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which has considerable potential to impact farm performance. This study uses data from a 2018 survey of 763 vegetable smallholder farms in China to estimate the impact of ICT on technical efficiency (TE). We adopt propensity score matching to create a balanced sample of ICT users and non-users, and a stochastic frontier model with sample selection correction to compare the two groups’ TE. After accounting for self-selection bias from both observables and unobservables, the study finds a positive effect of ICT use on TE. On average, the TE score of ICT users is 0.64, whereas ICT non-users have a lower score of 0.57. A quantile regression analysis further reveals a heterogeneous impact of ICT on TE, with the largest effects among less efficient farms. These results suggest that vegetable farmers’ performance could be fostered by the widespread use of ICT

Eficiencia persistente y transitoria en la producción de carne de cerdo en Europa: un análisis de frontera estocástica

La producción de carne de porcino tiene una gran importancia en las economías del sector agropecuario de Dinamarca, Francia, España y Polonia. Esta relevancia genera el interés por estudiar la eficiencia técnica de este sistema productivo en los cuatro países. El presente trabajo estima la eficiencia persistente, transitoria y total mediante un modelo de frontera estocástica del tipo cuatro componentes aplicado a muestras de productores porcinos de los cuatro países, para el periodo 2010-2015. Los resultados muestran que la eficiencia persistente es la más relevante para España, Francia y Dinamarca, con valores de 94%, 89% y 87% respectivamente. La eficiencia transitoria es la componente más importante para Polonia alcanzando 93% de eficiencia. La eficiencia total muestra el valor máximo para Dinamarca con76% y el menor para España con 72%. Estos resultados entregan importante información para la toma de decisiones. Polonia debe implementar políticas que permitan mejorar la estructura de su sistema productivo, mientras que los otros países deben tratar de generar incentivos de corto plazo para mejorar su eficiencia transitoria