Estimating Confidence Intervals for Technical Efficiency: The Case of Private Farms in Slovenia

This paper analyses the technical efficiency of private farms in Slovenia. Both parametric and non-parametric frontier techniques are employed. The results of the competing methods are compared, and variables that might determine the differences in efficiency are identified. Special attention is directed to the construction of confidence intervals for the individual efficiency estimates. For this purpose, distributional assumptions as well as bootstrapping methods are employed. The analysis reveals a significant degree of inefficiency. However, the confidence intervals suggest a more cautious interpretation of the efficiency scores. Copyright 2001, Oxford University Press.