IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/erevae/v47y2020i3p971-1008..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Revisiting firm flexibility and efficiency: evidence from the EU dairy processing industry

Author

Listed:
  • Stefan Hirsch
  • Ashok Mishra
  • Niklas Möhring
  • Robert Finger

Abstract

We analyse the flexibility of EU dairy processors to adjust production to fluctuating economic conditions. For a set of 2,186 firms, we derive production flexibility measures representing the effect of output variations on costs. The results reveal that flexibility is highest in Poland and Italy and lowest in Spain. Several firm-specific factors, such as size and age of the firm, are found to affect firm flexibility. Moreover, we detect a tradeoff between flexibility and technical efficiency for large firms indicating that a sole focus on firm efficiency can be insufficient. Finally, the results show that during economic crisis flexibility can help to sustain profitability.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Hirsch & Ashok Mishra & Niklas Möhring & Robert Finger, 2020. "Revisiting firm flexibility and efficiency: evidence from the EU dairy processing industry," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 47(3), pages 971-1008.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:erevae:v:47:y:2020:i:3:p:971-1008.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/erae/jbz003
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Koppenberg, Maximilian & Mishra, Ashok K. & Dalhaus, Tobias & Hirsch, Stefan, 2023. "The value of firm flexibility under extreme positive demand shocks: COVID-19 and toilet paper panic purchases," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    2. Stefan Hirsch & David Lanter & Robert Finger, 2021. "Profitability and profit persistence in EU food retailing: Differences between top competitors and fringe firms," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 235-263, April.
    3. Magdalena Kapelko & Alfons Oude Lansink & Encarna Guillamon‐Saorin, 2021. "Corporate social responsibility and dynamic productivity change in the US food and beverage manufacturing industry," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 286-305, April.
    4. Federica Di Marcantonio & Enkelejda Havari & Liesbeth Colen & Pavel Ciaian, 2022. "Do producer organizations improve trading practices and negotiation power for dairy farms? Evidence from selected EU countries," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 53(S1), pages 121-137, November.
    5. Hirsch, Stefan, 2022. "Product placement in the meat substitute sector: Evidence from a spatial demand model," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322181, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Christian Grovermann & Sylvain Quiédeville & Adrian Muller & Florian Leiber & Matthias Stolze & Simon Moakes, 2021. "Does organic certification make economic sense for dairy farmers in Europe?–A latent class counterfactual analysis," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 52(6), pages 1001-1012, November.
    7. Maximilian Koppenberg & Stefan Hirsch, 2022. "Output market power and firm characteristics in dairy processing: Evidence from three EU countries," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(2), pages 490-517, June.
    8. Yaghoob Jafari & Maximilian Koppenberg & Stefan Hirsch & Thomas Heckelei, 2023. "Markups and export behavior: Firm‐level evidence from the French food processing industry," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 105(1), pages 174-194, January.
    9. Ching‐Hua Yeh & Stefan Hirsch, 2023. "A meta‐regression analysis on the willingness‐to‐pay for country‐of‐origin labelling," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(3), pages 719-743, September.
    10. Samane Zare & Mahdi Asgari & Timothy Woods & Yuqing Zheng, 2020. "Consumer proximity and brand loyalty in craft soda marketing: A case study of Ale‐8‐One," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(4), pages 522-541, October.
    11. Ahmet Candemir & Sabine Duvaleix & Laure Latruffe, 2021. "Agricultural Cooperatives And Farm Sustainability – A Literature Review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1118-1144, September.
    12. Guillaume Bagnarosa & Mark Cummins & Michael Dowling & Fearghal Kearney, 2022. "Commodity risk in European dairy firms," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 49(1), pages 151-181.
    13. Peng Peng & Zhigang Xu, 2022. "Price expectations, risk aversion, and choice of sales methods for large‐scale farmers under incomplete market conditions," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(4), pages 1012-1031, October.
    14. Miguel Hernández‐Espallardo & Narciso Arcas‐Lario & Jorge L. Sánchez‐Navarro & Gustavo Marcos‐Matás, 2022. "Curbing members' opportunism in first‐tier and federated agricultural marketing cooperatives," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(1), pages 195-219, January.
    15. Maximilian Koppenberg & Stefan Hirsch, 2022. "Markup estimation: A comparison of contemporary methods at the example of European food retailers," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(1), pages 108-133, January.
    16. Caetano Luiz Beber & Sebastian Lakner & Ioannis Skevas, 2021. "Organizational forms and technical efficiency of the dairy processing industry in Southern Brazil," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 9(1), pages 1-22, December.
    17. Daniele Curzi & Valentina C. Materia & Cristina Vaquero‐Piñeiro, 2023. "Innovation as a resilience strategy to economic crises for international food and drink firms," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 303-321, March.
    18. Kevin N. Kim & Ani L. Katchova, 2022. "Agricultural bank acquisitions and postacquisition performance: An examination of the role of shared knowledge," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(4), pages 743-770, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:erevae:v:47:y:2020:i:3:p:971-1008.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eaaeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.