Farm Heterogeneity and Technical Efficiency PDF Download

Author: Almas Heshmati
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dairy farming
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Author: Awudu Abdulai
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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This article uses panel data estimation techniques to examine technical efficiency of individual dairy farms in northern Germany. To the extent that agricultural production is characterised by heterogeneous production conditions, estimation techniques that do not account for unobserved heterogeneity produce biased efficiency estimates. We therefore estimate a number of conventional panel data models and Greene's recently proposed true random-effects model, as well as an extension of the model to ascertain the effects of different specification on the production function and efficiency estimates. Our results appear to support theoretical expectations and previous findings according to which a specification that is both time-variant and also controls correlations between unobserved heterogeneity and the explanatory variables avoids heterogeneity bias and thus ensures consistent efficiency estimates.

Author: Pia Nilsson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030114198
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This book addresses poverty and well-being, equity, and efficiency in selected African countries. The chapters focus on three main topics: studies in the measurement and analysis of well-being and vulnerability to poverty, women's empowerment, and the dynamics and determinants of income and efficiency among smallholders. The chapters in the first section examine poverty, well-being, and vulnerability to poverty, as well as social exclusion, with a focus on households in Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Tanzania. They highlight the need to consider multidimensional measures of well-being and vulnerability to poverty, the need to address the distribution of vulnerability across different segments of the population, as well as the importance of developing public policies aimed at poverty reduction and promoting the well-being of the poor. The next section deals with issues related to women’s empowerment, including a multidimensional case study of women’s empowerment in Ghana and women’s access to microfinance services in Ethiopia. The final section focuses on dynamics and determinants of income and efficiency among farm households in Ethiopia and Uganda. Using a variety of methodologies, this volume provides a multifaceted approach to studying poverty and well-being in a diverse range of locations. As such, it of use to undergraduate and graduate students studying African economics or economics of poverty and well-being, and will be appealing to public policymakers and international aid agencies.

Author: Jørgen Primdahl
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511712494
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Analysis of the dynamic relationship between agricultural landscapes and the global change processes by which they are being transformed.

Author: Weldensie Teklay Embaye
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Agricultural development is an essential factor in the economic development of much of the developing world and comprises a significant element of foreign assistance portfolios. Over the last decade, there has seen a renewed interest in more credible estimates of the economic impacts of development programs, such as assistance to extension programs. We compare the estimation of technical efficiency to farm output and income as an outcome variable to evaluate the impact of development programs such as farm education and extension programs. We develop a simple theoretical model which shows that using technical efficiency as an outcome variable could be a viable alternative to more traditionally used outcome variables such as farm output and farm profit. We note that when farmers are capital constrained, extension programs can theoretically have a large efficiency effect despite a small or zero change in farm profits. If farm technical efficiency is used as an outcome variable, then it must be estimated correctly. Mismeasurement of farm technical efficiency leads to misleading extension program evaluations. Farm households face heterogeneous infrastructural constraints (Suri 2011; Ojiem et al. 2006), credit constraints, information barriers and other input market constraints (Duflo, Kremer and Robinson 2011; Jack 201; Suri 2011and Stifel and Minten 2008), labor markets constraints (Henning and Henningsen 2007), socio-economical (Ojiem et al. 2006) and non-farm income opportunities (Chang et al. 2012) and thus have different access to agricultural inputs and outputs. These constraints have a substantial impact on agricultural production decisions of farm households. A key production decision of farm households is the allocation of resource to cash and food crops. Production of cash crops requires relatively higher market involvement in both the purchase of inputs and the selling of output than home-consumed food crops. The heterogeneous constraints across farm households leads to a substantial imbalance in the transaction costs associated with the production of each crop. Moreover, home-consumed crops may have quality attributes (e.g. color, taste, softness of dough, and suitability for certain dishes) not reflected in market prices. Factors such as transaction costs, crop quality attributes, and other factors such as household characteristics are farmer specific and drive a heterogeneous price wedge between the market prices for household's crop production and the economic value of these crops for the household. These distinctions have important implication for farm productivity analysis, such as technical efficiency measurement. The standard approach to productivity analysis, such as efficiency estimation, assume that farm households face homogenous price wedges that leads to homogenous set of production and profit functions. However, the price gap created by transaction costs, crop quality attributes, and other factors such as household characteristics generally vary among subsistence, semi-subsistence and commercial farmers and leads to a heterogeneous set of profit and production frontiers. Subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers who produce largely home consumed crops have potentially greater price wedges than commercial farmers. Failing to account for the heterogeneity in price wedges that drive heterogeneity profit and production frontiers is likely to lead to underestimation of the efficiency of subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers. We test if traditional productivity analysis indeed underestimates the efficiency of subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers by employing a conditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model for household survey data in Uganda. Results confirm that naïve estimates of efficiency understate the efficiency scores of subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers. The results cast doubt on policies, such as extension programs or other information treatments, that interpret low efficiency scores for subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers as a management shortfall. We demonstrate the use of farm technical efficiency as an outcome measure by analyzing data from 2008-2012 for farm training program in Armenia. In this program, farmers received technical guidance on modern farm techniques. Two previous evaluations (Schwab and Shanoyan 2016; Fortson et al. 2012) find ambiguous evidence that farm profits increased. The measurement or potential gain from an extension program is captured using farm technical efficiency measures. We find evidence that the program in Armenia increased farm technical efficiency from 2008 to 2012.

Author: Subhash C. Ray
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811034559
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1797

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This three-volume handbook includes state-of-the-art surveys in different areas of neoclassical production economics. Volumes 1 and 2 cover theoretical and methodological issues only. Volume 3 includes surveys of empirical applications in different areas like manufacturing, agriculture, banking, energy and environment, and so forth.

Author: George Edward Battese
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780858349704
Category : Agricultural productivity
Languages : en
Pages : 31

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Author: Luc J. Christiaensen
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural Development
Languages : en
Pages : 49

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The relative contribution of a sector to poverty reduction is shown to depend on its direct and indirect growth effects as well as its participation effect. The paper assesses how these effects compare between agriculture and non-agriculture by reviewing the literature and by analyzing cross-country national accounts and poverty data from household surveys. Special attention is given to Sub-Saharan Africa. While the direct growth effect of agriculture on poverty reduction is likely to be smaller than that of non-agriculture (though not because of inherently inferior productivity growth), the indirect growth effect of agriculture (through its linkages with nonagriculture) appears substantial and at least as large as the reverse feedback effect. The poor participate much more in growth in the agricultural sector, especially in low-income countries, resulting in much larger poverty reduction impact. Together, these findings support the overall premise that enhancing agricultural productivity is the critical entry-point in designing effective poverty reduction strategies, including in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, to maximize the poverty reducing effects, the right agricultural technology and investments must be pursued, underscoring the need for much more country specific analysis of the structure and institutional organization of the rural economy in designing poverty reduction strategies.

Author: John A. Dixon
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9789251046272
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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A joint FAO and World Bank study which shows how the farming systems approach can be used to identify priorities for the reduction of hunger and poverty in the main farming systems of the six major developing regions of the world.

Author: Armando Mendes
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400757395
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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The editors draw on a 3-year project that analyzed a Portuguese area in detail, comparing this study with papers from other regions. Applications include the estimation of technical efficiency in agricultural grazing systems (dairy, beef and mixed) and specifically for dairy farms. The conclusions indicate that it is now necessary to help small dairy farms in order to make them more efficient. These results can be compared with the technical efficiency of a sample of Spanish dairy processing firms presented by Magdalena Kapelko and co-authors.