Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2018
Authors
Liviu Nichiforel Kevin Keary Philippe Deuffic Gerhard Weiss Bo Jellesmark Thorsen Georg Winkel Mersudin Avdibegović Zuzana Dobsinska Diana Feliciano Paola Gatto Elena Górriz Mifsud Marjanke Hoogstra-Klein Michal Hrib Teppo Hujala Laszlo Jager Vilém Jarský Krzysztof Jodlowski Anna Lawrence Diana Lukmine Špela Pezdevšek Malovrh Jelena Nedeljkovic Dragan Nonic Silvija Krajter Ostoic Klaus Pukall Jacques Rondeux Theano Samara Zuzana Sarvašová Ramona Elena Scriban Rita Šilingienė Milan Sinko Makedonka Stojanovska Vladimir Stojanovski Nickola Stoyanov Meelis Teder Birger Vennesland Lelde Vilkriste Erik Wilhelmsson Jerylee Wilkes-Allemann Laura BouriaudAbstract
Private forests are widespread in Europe providing a range of ecosystem services of significant value to society, and there are calls for novel policies to enhance their provision and to face the challenges of environmental changes. Such policies need to acknowledge the importance of private forests, and importantly they need to be based on a deep understanding of how property rights held by private forest owners vary across Europe. We collected and analysed data on the content of property rights based on formal legal requirements existing in 31 European jurisdictions. To allow a comparison across jurisdictions, we constructed an original Property Rights Index for Forestry encompassing five rights domains (access, withdrawal, management, exclusion and alienation). We documented substantial variation of the private forest owners’ rights, and notably to i) make decisions in operational management and the formulation of management goals, ii) withdraw timber resources from their forest, and iii) exclude others from the use of forest resources. We identified broad relations between the scope for decision making of private forest owners and jurisdictions’ former socio-political background and geographical distribution. The variation in the content of property rights has implications for the implementation of international environmental policies, and stresses the need for tailored policy instruments, when addressing European society’s rural development, the bioeconomy, climate change mitigation measures and nature protection strategies.
Abstract
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Authors
Atle Wehn HegnesAbstract
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Abstract
We investigated whether diversification and/or structural change would improve Norwegian agriculture. Using a flexible technology approach to account for different technologies, we assessed economies of scope and scale of dairy and cropping farms, including regional differences. We fitted translog cost functions to farm-level panel data for the period 1991–2014. We found both economies of scope and scale on the farms. Dairy farms have an economic incentive to integrate dairying with cropping in all regions of Norway, and vice versa. Thus, policy makers should eschew interventions that inhibit diversification or structural change and that increase the costs of food production.
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the economic performance of Norwegian crop farms using a stochastic frontier analysis. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis was based on a translog cost function and unbalanced farm-level panel data for 1991–2013 from 455 Norwegian farms specialized in crop production in eastern and central regions of Norway. Findings – The results of the analysis show that the mean efficiency was about 78–81 percent. Farm management practices and socioeconomic factors were shown to significantly affect the economic performance of Norwegian crop farms. Research limitations/implications – Farmers are getting different types of support from the government and the study does not account for the different effects of different kinds of subsidy on cost efficiency. Different subsidies might have different effects on farm performance. To get more informative and useful results, it would be necessary to repeat the analysis with less aggregated data on subsidy payments. Practical implications – One implication for farmers (and their advisers) is that many of them are less efficient than the estimated benchmark (best performing farms). Thus, those lagging behind the best performing farms need to look at the way they are operating and to seek out ways to save costs or increase crop production. Perhaps there are things for lagging farmers to learn from their more productive farming neighbors. For instance, those farmers not practicing crop rotation might be well advised to try that practice. Social implications – For both taxpayers and consumers, one implication is that the contributions they pay that go to subsidize farmers appear to bring some benefits in terms of more efficient production that, in turn, increase the supply of some foods so possibly making food prices more affordable. Originality/value – Unlike previous performance studies in the literature, the authors estimated farm-level economic performance accounting for the contribution of both an important farm management practice and selected socioeconomic factors. Good farm management practices, captured through crop rotation, land tenure, government support and off-farm activities were found to have made a positive and statistically significant contribution to reducing the cost of production on crop-producing farms in the Central and Eastern regions of Norway.
Authors
Habtamu AlemAbstract
This paper examines the recent advances in stochastic frontier models and its implications for the performance of the Norwegian crop producing farms. Unlike the previous studies, we used a cost function in multiple input-output frameworks to estimate both long-run (persistent) and short-run (transient) inefficiency. The empirical analysis is based on unbalanced farm-level panel data for 1991-2013 from 455 Norwegian farms specialized in crop production with 3885 observations. We estimated seven SF panel data models grouped into four categories regarding the assumptions used to the nature of inefficiency. The estimated cost efficiency scores varied from 53 % to 95%, showing that the results are sensitive to how the inefficiency is modeled and interpreted. Keywords: cost function, short and long-run inefficiency, agriculture, panel data
Abstract
This paper addresses the endogeneity of inputs and output (which is mostly ignored in the stochastic frontier (SF) literature) in the SF panel data model under the behavioural assumption that firms maximize returns to the outlay. We consider a four component SF panel data model in which the four components are: firms' latent heterogeneity, persistent inefficiency, transient inefficiency and random shocks. Second, we include determinants in transient inefficiency. Finally, to avoid the impact of distributional assumptions in estimating the technology parameters, we apply a multi-step estimation strategy to an unbalanced panel dataset from Norwegian crop-producing farms observed from 1993 to 2014. Distributional assumptions are made in second and third steps to predict both persistent and transient inefficiency, and their marginal effects. Keywords Efficiency; Endogeneity; Returns to the outlay; Panel data
Abstract
This paper compares technical efficiencies (TEs) and technological gap ratios (TGRs) for dairy farms in regions of Norway, accounting for differences in working environments. We used the state-of-the-art stochastic meta-frontier approach to estimate TEs and TGRs to account for regional heterogeneity, and the ‘true’ random-effect model to account for farm effects. The dataset used was farm-level balanced panel data for 24 years (1992–2014), with 5442 observations from 731 dairy farms. The results of the analysis provide empirical evidence of small regional differences in TEs, TGRs, and input use. Furthermore, the results may provide support for the more regionally specific agricultural policy, in terms of support schemes and structural regulations.
Authors
Habtamu AlemAbstract
In this article, we estimate the progress of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) in the Norwegian grain production sector. Previous studies conducted in TFP estimation can be criticized for estimated production function relied on the assumption that the underlying technology is the same for all regions and firms face similar environmental conditions. In reality, agricultural firms in different regions resource endowment, adoption of new technology, and innovation might be different because of farmers face different production opportunities. For this study, we classified the country into two main grain producing regions with district level of development, and hence production technologies. We used farm level balanced panel data for 19 years (1996-2014) with 1463 observations from farms specialized in grain production. We applied the ‘true' fixed effect stochastic frontier model to estimate region level efficiency and source of productivity changes. The result of the analysis shows that there has been a productivity improvement in the sector, and technical change has had the main source of productivity change.