How did Hungarian crop farms perform before accession: a comparison of technical efficiency and technology with France

The paper investigates the difference in technical efficiency, productivity and technology between French and Hungarian cereal, oilseed and porteinseed (COP) darms during 2001-2004, using Data Envelopment Analysis with separate and common frontiers. Results indicate that Hungarian farmers showed lower scale efficiency and worse management practices than French farming on average. By contrast, under a common hypothetical technology, Hungarian farms would be by far the leaders, probably due to their scale economies and to their low use of variable inputs. This leadership might however not be sustainable as the Hungarian sample recorded technological regress, more and more substantial over the period. The EU subsidies that Hungarian farmers receive since enlargement might help them to reverse this trend