10 years of transition in Ukraine agriculture: An analysis of productivity and efficiency of enterprises

This paper analyzes efficiency and total factor productivity (TFP) change of large agriculturalenterprises during their transition to a market economy in Ukraine. In this case the efficiencyis calculated by data envelopment analysis and the productivity change is measured by theMalmquist Productivity Change Index in the period between 1990 and 1999. On average, TFPdeclined by 6% annually, dropping a total 42%. The main reason for the observed TFP declineis a decrease in technical efficiency, which is found to be remarkably significant. At the sametime there is a high variation among individual enterprises: their distribution of efficiencyscores widens, which indicates that the farms diverge with respect to their economic performance.The Tobit regression analysis is conducted where the efficiency scores are related tofactors such as farm type, farm size, initial conditions and legal form.