The Essays On Competitiveness, Efficiency, And Productivity: Methodological Issues And Applications

This PhD thesis consists of six papers that could be divided into two groups. The rst group comprises four papers that deal with assessing and explaining performance of agricultural sector in Ukraine and Belarus. The second group comprises two papers that deal with some methodological and conceptual issues generated in the course of preparing the rst group of papers. In the rst paper 'Ukraine: Agricultural Competitiveness' we perform a disaggregated competitiveness analysis for major individual agricultural products in Ukraine. This paper is a part of the World Bank Policy Note that was prepared in the context of the World Bank research project 'Ukraine: Agricultural Competitiveness' (see von Cramon-Taubadel et. al., 2008a; Chapter III)1 . Domestic Resource Cost (DRC) and Social Cost Benet Ratio (SCB) indicators using a Ukraine-wide farms accounting dataset are employed in the paper to generate DRC and SCB distributions that demonstrate the competitiveness of Ukrainian agriculture. The main conclusion is that Ukrainian agriculture demonstrates a clear lack of international competitiveness and competitive farms account for a disproportionate share of Ukraine's total output of agricultural products. In the second paper 'The Determinants of Dairy Farming Competitiveness in Ukraine' we essentially continue the analysis performed in the rst paper and focus on the determinants of dairy farming competitiveness in Ukraine. Dairy has been highlighted by the Minister of Agriculture Policy of Ukraine as a branch of agriculture that can be expected to face especially dicult challenges as Ukraine became a WTO member in 2008 and started negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA) with the EU2 . In particular we look at the impact of the farm size, productivity, labor intensity, arable land and subsidies on competitiveness.