A non parametric approach for the study of the controls in the production of agribusiness products

Abstract

The present study regards the analysis of the visits (and the relative disputes) for checking the preparation of agribusiness products, noticed by the ICQ on the whole national territory, occurred in the period 1997-2006. The research has been performed on the available data for year and for sector. Particularly the examined sectors has been: Milk-Cheese, Feed and Integrators, Eggs, Honey and Meats. First of all, we have realized the "dispute rates", dividing the number of dispute to the total number of inspection visits for each sector and year. In this way, we focused our attention both on the temporal variations of the dispute rates in the years and on the comparison among the different sectors of production. We used a nonparametric approach, since we haven’t guarantee about asymptotically valid results: in particular we applied the Cox and Stuart test for trend, the NPC test and the NPC Ranking.