Farm survival and growth in transition economies: theory and empirical evidence from Hungary

Our conceptual model states that new individual farms may begin at a small, even sub-optimal, scale of production and then those farms that are successful will survive and grow, whereas those that are not will remain small and may ultimately be forced to exit from production. The samples of individual farms analysed throughout this article are drawn from the 1998 Farm Survey in Hungary. Our estimation results show that older and larger farms are more likely to survive, farm growth decreases with farm age when farm size is held constant and that learning considerations are important. Beside these standard results, in transition economies farmers', market and industry characteristics have a significant impact on the survival and growth rates of individual farm enterprises.