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 firms 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.
Forleo et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: