Agricultural Economics, 2015 (vol. 61), issue 6
Recent areas of innovation activities in the Czech dairy industryOriginal Paper
Jindřich ŠPIČKA, Luboš SMUTKA, Richard SELBY
Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2015, 61(6):249-264 | DOI: 10.17221/128/2014-AGRICECON 
The aim of the article is to compare and identify differences between the innovations within the Czech dairy industry. Dairy products are the export pillars of Czech agrarian foreign trade, and the dairy industry was one of the most important recipients of public support on innovations from the Rural Development Programme (RDP). The core of this research is an analysis of sixteen projects, supported under RDP sub-measure I.1.3.2 from 2007 to September 2013. Data from the representative sample of approved projects have been converted into a set of questions and answers to enable them to be evaluated, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The dataset...
Natural climatic conditions as a determinant of productivity and economic efficiency of agricultural entitiesOriginal Paper
Peter ADAMIŠIN, Rastislav KOTULIČ, Ivana KRAVČÁKOVÁ VOZÁROVÁ, Roman VAVREK
Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2015, 61(6):265-274 | DOI: 10.17221/153/2014-AGRICECON
The scientific contribution builds on the previous scientific studies analysing the determinants of productivity and economic efficiency of the agricultural entities and extends the knowledge of the spatial econometrics area at the NUTS IV level (at the district level) for the reporting period. The paper aimed to assess the development of productivity and economic efficiency of the agricultural entities in the reporting period based on the synthetic evaluation of the selected economic indicators by the methods of cluster analysis, and so to create a spatial map according to the regional differentiation at the NUTS IV level. On the basis of the completed...
Technical efficiency and its determinants in the European UnionOriginal Paper
Anna NOWAK, Tomasz KIJEK, Katarzyna DOMAŃSKA
Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2015, 61(6):275-283 | DOI: 10.17221/200/2014-AGRICECON
The study concerns the measurement of the technical efficiency of agriculture in the 27 European Union (EU) countries in 2010. The studies were conducted based on the result-oriented DEA method assuming variable advantages of scale. Moreover, in the study, the factors affecting technical efficiency were identified, and the econometric modelling of their impact was performed with the use of the Tobit model. The studies indicate that across the 27 EU Member States, the level of the technical efficiency of agriculture is diverse, and the difference between the states with the highest and the lowest efficiencies is 40%. Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, France,...
Economic effects of the biochar application on rice supply in TaiwanOriginal Paper
Meng-Shiuh CHANG, Wen WANG, Chih-Chun KUNG
Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2015, 61(6):284-295 | DOI: 10.17221/147/2014-AGRICECON
The objective of the study is to analyze the economics of the bio-energy production for Taiwan in terms of the bio-energy production, social welfare and crop yield increase under the conventional bio-power, ethanol and pyrolysis. The effects on rice production patterns are also examined for the fast and slow pyrolysis plus the biochar application. In addition to adopting the mathematical programming model (Modified Taiwan Agricultural Sector Model) in the analysis of the bio-energy production and the crop cultivation patterns, the study further employs a nonparametric kernel regression model to forecast the increased benefits of rice from using biochar...