Agglomeration Economies in Ukrainian Dairy Sector: a Marked Point Process Approach

Even after more than 15 years of transition from plan to market, agriculture in Ukraine still faces many challenges in terms of its structure. The evidence in the literature points to significant heterogeneity of technical efficiency and productivity scores in Ukraine. Moreover, both the recently approved WTO accession, and the ongoing negotiations on a free trade agreement with the EU will require further improvements in productivity and competitiveness at the farm level. Using farm-level data for 2004-2005, we study the presence and possible causes of agglomeration economies in Ukrainian dairy sector. One of the most important results is that there are agglomeration effects in the sector. The performance of dairy farms is influenced by the performance of its neighbors. Furthermore, the dairy farms in the neighborhood of a dairy processor outperform the more distant ones, although the heterogeneity of this effect is substantial.