Estimation of the imperative of rural area development on panel data in the process of managing agricultural holdings in Poland

Abstract

In today’s Polish economy, management processes in agri‐business should be considered and taken into account in a more comprehensive way. The accession to the European Union created an obligation for Poland to implement solutions arising from the Common Agricultural Policy. Due to factors related to management in agri‐business, farmer‐entrepreneurs started to pay more attention to issues connected with the management process. An agricultural holding, like every enterprise, in order to be competitive and achieve a constant market presence, needs to adapt its production to current needs, invest in its development (thus, contributing to the development of rural areas), improve the quality of its products, and modernise. Management of agricultural enterprises is specific in character because the decisions that are made often concern not only production or investment, but also creation of actions that rely on management solutions. The aim of the paper is to present an original imperative (the imperative in article is a synonym for the word model) that is estimated by the method of least squares and uses panel data related to the measure ‘Creation and development of micro‐enterprises’, including the implementation of funds for modernisation and development of investments in micro‐enterprises. The results of the study made it possible to assess the effects of managing agricultural micro‐enterprises in 16 provinces in Poland in the context of the decisions they made regarding the use of the funds under the Rural Development Programme (RDP) 2007–2013. These results can be used in the assessment of RDP management in the current financial perspective 2014–2020, which attests to their universality.