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Abstract

Organic farms work under very heterogeneous natural-site and socio-economic conditions. This heterogeneity is of clear relevance for economic efficiency and for the decision of farms to convert to organic farming. In order to produce proper results efficiency analysis must consider such heterogeneity and self-selection aspects. This applies in particular to data envelopment analysis, since this technique does not calculate error terms, but include heterogeneity into efficiency results. One way to control for such effects is matching. Matching is based on the assumption that under a given vector of observable variables, the outcome of one individual is independent of the adoption of a specific treatment. In our paper we present how to implement matching into efficiency analysis of organic farms. We give a brief overview on literature applying this technique and we discuss which insights the application of matching might contribute to the current discussion on organic farming.

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