Technical and Scale Efficiency in the Italian Citrus Farming: Comparison between SFA and DEA Approaches

Abstract

Several studies have compared technical efficiency estimates derived from parametric and non parametric approaches, whereas a very small number of studies have aimed to compare scale efficiency estimations. This paper aims to estimate technical and scale efficiency in the Italian citrus farming. Estimation was carried out using both Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). Empirical findings suggest that the greater portion of overall inefficiency in the sample might depend on producing below the production frontier than on operating under an inefficient scale. Furthermore, we found that the estimated technical efficiency from the SFA model is substantially at the same level of this estimated from DEA model, whereas the scale efficiency arisen from SFA is larger than this obtained from DEA analysis.