Management's critical success factors (MCSFs) are used to indicate how farm profits develop, but their usefulness as profitability predictors has previously not been analyzed statistically. This paper explores the usefulness of some commonly used MCSFs in Swedish dairy farms, by investigating whether the MCSFs are significant predictors of economic efficiency. Further, the paper takes a comprehensive view of evaluating farm level efficiency, in that all major input and output efficiency scores are estimated. Previous literature has focused on only one score, or on only one perspective. Our results show that cost efficiency is the more problematic part of the profitability process. Especially the allocative part needs to be improved. Moreover, the results show that the MCSFs milk quality, herd fertility and involuntary culls ratio may not work as indicators of economic performance, whereas milk yield per cow and the mastitis ratio are significant indicators.
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