IMPACT OF AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES ON SMALLHOLDERS’ TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM ETHIOPIA

2014 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gashaw Tadesse ABATE ◽  
Gian Nicola FRANCESCONI ◽  
Kindie GETNET
2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Vanessa Schaefer ◽  
João Paulo Augusto Eça ◽  
Marcelo Botelho da Costa Moraes ◽  
Amaury José Rezende

Agricultural cooperatives have the main goals of meeting the economic, social and cultural needs of their members. Although they do not seek profits, they must be competitive since they compete with other cooperatives and companies in the market. In this sense, the search for technical efficiency to give cooperatives a better market position contrasts with the difficulty these organizations face in obtaining foreign capital to enable greater investments. There is little empirical evidence, however, of the relationship between financial constraints and technical efficiency in these organizations. According to theoretical assumptions, this relationship could be positive or negative. Thus, this paper analyzes the impact of financial constraints on the technical efficiency of Brazilian agricultural cooperatives. For this, we used two metrics to measure financial constraint and analyzed panel data on 68 Brazilian agricultural cooperatives for the 2005-2014 period. Despite the theoretical predictions, our main results suggest there is no evidence that financial constraints affect technical efficiency. This result can be explained by the characteristics attributed to Brazilian cooperatives, that is, the fact they deal with different commodities (multi-purpose) and do not have strong demand for investments (technology). This paper contributes to the literature both by providing new empirical evidence regarding the relationship between technical efficiency and financial constraints and by introducing a new metric for analyzing financial constraint in the context of cooperatives.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Thembi Xaba ◽  
Nyankomo Marwa ◽  
Babita Mathur-Helm

Agricultural cooperatives are expected to generate sustainable profit as they are established as a vehicle of economic development. Efficiency and profitability analysis measures the performance of a firm, and assists management in decision-making through benchmarking with other firms (Marwa & Aziakpono, 2014). To understand the performance of agricultural cooperatives, our study analysed efficiency and profitability using an efficiency-profitability matrix to provide for multi-dimensional analysis. The study used secondary data from annual financial statements for the financial years 2015/16 collected from 19 agricultural cooperatives. Technical efficiency was estimated using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and profitability was estimated using Returns on Assets (ROA). The median scores were 68% for technical efficiency and 10% for profitability. Using the 68% efficiency and 10% profitability benchmark, the matrix separated best performers from low performers. The matrix indicated that 26% of the cooperatives had high-efficiency levels with high profitability (stars), however there was an even distribution between the stars and sleepers: 5 out of 19 cooperatives were sleepers and 5 out of 19 were stars. The majority of the decision-making units (DMUs) at 42% (8 out of 19) are in quadrant 3, categorised as ‘question mark’. These DMUs had low-efficiency scores and low profitability ratios. Only 1 out of 19 cooperatives had high-efficiency levels and low profitability scores. The results demonstrate that technically efficient firms do not always translate to profitable firms: in this regard, management needs to investigate how best to allocate resources in order to remain relevant within the business context and competition. Policy makers need to investigate other drivers of efficiency and profitability when measuring the performance of a firm to influence future policy directives.


2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (No. 8) ◽  
pp. 368-378
Author(s):  
S. Covaci ◽  
Z. Sojková

This study has focused on two main tasks: verifying the suitability of using stochastic frontier analysis on a transforming sector, and providing empirical evidence to explain the technical efficiency structure among farms in the time period 2000–2004. Two stochastic frontier model specifications were employed, the Battese and Coelli 1992 specification with the systematically time-varying inefficiency effect, and the Battese and Coelli 1995 one stage specification explaining technical inefficiency based on farm-specific variables. Our analyses were carried out at the commodity level, wheat production, where the accessibility of a data panel allowed us to enrich the calculation of the level of technical efficiency by the analysis of productivity changes within the chosen period of time, supports this idea as well. 


1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 299-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lassaad Lachaal

AbstractThe impacts of program subsidy on productivity growth is investigated in this study. Mundlak's concept of endogeneity is applied to technical efficiency and generalized within a dual framework. Technology is described by an aggregate cost function while technical efficiency is conditional on a vector of state variables. Empirical evidence from the U.S. dairy sector supports the hypothesis that protectionism, in the form of program subsidy, is the source of considerable technical inefficiencies.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document