Productivity and performance of Finnish and Norwegian dairy farms : does EU membership matter?

Timo Sipiläinen, (MTT and University of Helsinki), Gudbrand Lien, (NILF and Lillehammer University College), Subal C. Kumbhakar, (Binghamton University), Marte Bjørnsen, (NILF)

Dairy production has long been the most important production line in Finnish and Norwegian agriculture. Prior to Finland joining the EU, farm structure as well as national agricultural policy was very similar in the two countries. In this paper, we explore development and differences in productivity and efficiency trends in the two countries before and after 1994 when Finland joined the EU. The challenge is to isolate the effect of EU-membership from other events like introduction of milk quotas, and more generally, changes in agricultural policy and macro-economic factors. We model productivity growth by means of standard production efficiency frontier models on twenty-year panels of Finnish and Norwegian farm accounts data.

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Year of publication:	[2011] ; Preliminary version
Authors:	Sipiläinen, Timo ; Lien, Gudbrand ; Kumbhakar, Subal ; Bjørnsen, Marte
Published in:	New challenges for European regions and urban areas in a globalised world : 51st ERSA Congress : 51st European Congress of the Regional Science Association International : 37th Spanish Regional Science Association Conference : 30th August - 3rd September 2011, Barcelona, Spain
Publisher:	[Louvain-la-Neuve] : European Regional Science Association
Subject:	profit \| total factor productivity growth \| duality \| input distance function \| Finnish and Norwegian dairy farming \| Produktivität \| Productivity \| Finnland \| Finland \| Norwegen \| Norway \| Milchviehhaltung \| Dairy farming \| Technische Effizienz \| Technical efficiency \| Schätzung \| Estimation \| Produktionsfunktion \| Production function \| Milchverarbeitung \| Dairy industry