臺灣地區農會整體經營效率之分析

Assessing the comparative Efficiency of Farmer Associations in Taiwan

以往有關農會經營效率之研究，多僅止於農會信用部門，不曾以農會整體組織作為衡量經營效率之標的。本文嘗試建立四大事業部門的投入產出指標，以衡量具有多層面產出之農會經營效率；文中並採用修正Fried et al. (2002) 之三階段DEA 模型，以摒除環境變數對於衡量農會經營效率之影響。研究發現，臺灣農會的技術效率平均值為0.788，表示仍有約21.2%的經營改善空間；但若未考慮環境變數之影響，農會之技術效率估計值會低估約22.7%。研究亦顯示，都市型農會的效率高於混合型農會及鄉村型農會，農會所屬的地理區域間則無顯著差異；同時，員工較年輕化與分支機構數較少的農會則經營效率表現較佳。

Pervious research on performance of farmer association (FA) inTaiwan mostly aimed at the credit department of FA. Few study hasstudied the operational efficiency of FA as a whole. In this paper, weattempt to build up aggregate multi-dimension input output indexes of FAfor assessing performance of FAs.The three-stage DEA model developed by Fried et. al (2002) wasrevised to consider the possible effect from environmental variables.Results showed that in 2000 the average technical efficiency of FAs inTaiwan was 0.788, which implied a 21.2% capacity for furtherimprovement. Ignorance of effects of environmental variables onefficiency measurement would result in an underestimation efficiencylevel by about 22.7%. Results also indicated that average efficiency ofurban type FAs was greater than that of mixed and rural type FAs. FAs inregion is not statistically signification different. In addition, a FA with highpercentage of young staff and low branches number tended to performbetter.