The Efficiency of Poultry Farms: A Dynamic Analysis Based on a Stochastic Frontier Approach and Panel Data

EU production is important on global poultry markets and is concentrated in a few coun-tries, among which Italy. Aim of the study is to investigate the technical efficiency of Ital-ian poultry farms in years 2019-2022 characterized by Covid-19 pandemic and avian in-fluenza that occurred almost simultaneously and that presented poultry farms with im-portant economic challenges. In particular, the study aims to observe how efficiently poultry farms utilized their inputs due to controllable or managerial factors and to exoge-nous shocks and factors beyond the firm's control. Data was retrieved from the RICA da-tabase, the Italian section of the EU Farm Accountancy Data Network. After a descriptive analysis, a Stochastic Frontier Model was applied to the panel data to estimate the pro-duction frontier and firm-specific inefficiency factors. The results reveal the relevance of certain cost categories (feed, water, fuel and electricity) and their increase over the ob-served period. Current and capital costs have a positive and significant impact on the value of production. As regards the determinants of technical efficiency, a greater endow-ment of some inputs (labor, feed, and water) and the size of farms in terms of livestock units are correlated with an improvement in the technical efficiency of farms.