臺灣農會信用部生產結構與成本效率之歷年趨勢分析

The Evolution of the Production Structure and Cost Efficiency of Taiwan's Farmers' Credit Unions

本文採用資料包絡分析法，以共同邊界（Metafrontier）概念來評估233家農會信用部於農業金融法實施前後之2001年至2009年的成本效率，並將其分解為分配效率、純技術效率與規模效率，以探討農業金融法實施的效果，以及信用部經營無效率的來源。效率評估結果顯示，共同邊界所得之平均成本效率值為0.696，顯示信用部具有節省30.4%成本的空間來生產其原有的產出。其中，投入配置分配效率可藉由進一步提高每員工吸收資金金額，以及降低每員工使用資本數量來改善；而技術效率中，純技術效率之改善又比規模效率來得重要。統計檢定則顯示「農業金融法」之實施，確實使得信用部績效較實施前為高，惟其所帶來助益很快就被全球經濟不景氣所抵銷，顯示經濟景氣對於信用部經營的重要性。

This paper adopts the Metafrontier Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to investigate the impact of agricultural financial reform on the cost efficiencies of Taiwan's Farmers' Credit Unions (FCUs) by using panel data over the period 2001-2009. The cost efficiencies are further decomposed into allocation efficiencies, pure technical efficiencies and scale efficiencies to uncover the source of inefficiency of FCUs. Empirical results show that the cost efficiency of FCUs can be improved by 30.4% on average, in which the increase of the fund intensity and the decrease of the capital intensity are helpful for the enhancement of allocative efficiency and the improvement of pure technical efficiency is more important than that of scale efficiency. Statistical tests indicate that the FCUs positively reacted to the financial reform. However, its positive effects were offset very quickly by the economic recession resulted from the financial crisis in 2008 and shows that the economic condition is important for the operation of FCUs.