Agglomeration externalities and technical efficiency in French pig production

Solène Larue and Laure Latruffe

No 210403, Working Papers from Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2)

Abstract: The objective of the paper is to assess the effects of spatial agglomeration on the technical efficiency of French pig farms. We use a two-stage method with the first stage consisting of calculating the efficiency scores of pig activity with the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method, and the second stage being a regression of these scores on agglomeration variables. Data consist of 936 French pig producers in 2004. Results suggest that these farms were as much affected by positive agglomeration externalities (in the form of knowledge spillovers due to the density of farms, and arising from their closeness to downstream markets) as any other businesses. Our analysis also sheds light on the specificity of the sector, namely that environment pressures can force pig farmers to be more efficient, an effect that may be counteracted when legal dispositions relating to manure spreading are too stringent.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Livestock Production/Industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/210403/files/WP%20SMART-LERECO%2009-10.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Agglomeration externalities and technical efficiency in French pig production (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:inrasl:210403

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.210403

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Institut National de la recherche Agronomique (INRA), Departement Sciences Sociales, Agriculture et Alimentation, Espace et Environnement (SAE2) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().