Effects of the European Union Farm Credit Programs on Efficiency and Productivity of the Greek Livestock Sector : A Stochastic DEA Application

This study examines technical efficiency and productivity growth of Greek livestock farms participating in the 1994 European Union Farm Credit Program (1994-EU-FCP), i.e. regulation 2328/91. The farm-level economic data set used in this paper consists of two different groups of livestock farms, i.e. one group contains farms participating in the 1994-EU-FCP while the other one contains non-participating farms. The data set is observed over the 1993 and 1997 years. The paper uses the approach developed by Simar and Wilson (1998a, b) to bootstrapping both DEA efficiency measures and Malmquist productivity indices. Furthermore, the present paper uses the Malmquist index decomposition proposed by Simar and Wilson (1998b) and Zofio and Lovell (1997) to investigate the sources of productivity change. The technical efficiency score results indicate that the program managed to increase the efficiency of the participated farms though the less efficient farms entered the program. The total factor productivity growth results show a statistically significant increase of productivity for the group of program farms but no change for the group of non-program farms