Part-Time Farming and Scale Efficiency

Abstract

While many studies have compared the technical efficiency of part-time and full-time farms, we add to the existing literature by extending this analysis to scale efficiency. Based on a sample of crop farms in Austria between 2010 and 2017, we find that part-time farms are more scale efficient when they are evaluated with respect to their production technology and the difference in scale efficiency between part-time and full-time farms increases over time. Although we do not find any significant difference in technical efficiency, full-time farms have a higher technological change. Furthermore, an analysis of the determinants of scale efficiency confirms that factors facilitating farm growth also increase scale efficiency.