Efficiency and Productivity Change in the Greek Dairy Industry

The objective of this paper is to measure the efficiency and the productivity change of Greek dairy firms, using non parametric approaches. This assessment is being achieved by the computation of the CRS and the VRS DEA models, the context dependent DEA approach and finally, the evolution of the Malmquist productivity index. These empirical analyses are based on data from 29 Greek dairy firms. This implementation provided helpful information regarding the efficiency ranking of the firms that operate in the Greek dairy industry. Findings that inefficient firms are over-invested and overexposed to high risk operation practices provide suggestions for future reparative actions in order to improve efficiency. This goal does not require radial effort from firms to achieve intermediate targets. Finally, stagnated mean efficiency change does not imply stagnated efficiency change for individual firms, but it is the outcome of a large variance of efficiency change scores being achieved by dairy firms from period to period.