A mezőgazdaság és a turizmus termelékenységi mutatói Zala és Somogy megyékben

The study compared the performance of agricultural and tourism companies in two rural regions of Hungary. 2,613 companies were evaluated for the period 2004-2019 (16 years). The data come from the tax returns of all partnerships in the studied counties that were operating in both 2004 and 2019, regardless of when they started their operations. Agriculture and rural tourism depend on environmental factors, so they are more severely affected by adverse environmental and natural events than other manufacturing or service industries. The aim of the research was to identify differences between the two industries and to explore the patterns of their economic performance over time and their characteristics related to their size. We assessed labor, sales, total assets, labor productivity, and total factor productivity (TFP) using descriptive statistics and panel regression analysis. The results showed that the performance of firms in these two industries differs significantly in terms of total assets, sales, labor utilization, and labor productivity, but does not differ in terms of TFP. We also examined the comparison in terms of the 16-year average and the changes in the indicators over time. Our results highlight that the performance of enterprises also differs significantly based on their size. Smaller firms are generally more labor-efficient than larger ones. Furthermore, labor efficiency is positively affected by total asset value, but not TFP. Contrary to common assumptions, agriculture is not less efficient than tourism.