Frontier Production Functions and Technical Efficiency: a Survey of Empirical Applications in Agricultural Economics

Production frontiers, technical efficiency, survey of applications. The modelling and estimation of frontier production functions has been an important area of econometric research during the last two decades. F~rsund, Lovell and Schmidt (1980) and Schmidt (1986) present reviews of the concepts and models involved and cite some of the empirical applications which had appeared to their respective times of publication. This paper seeks to update the econometric modelling of frontier production functions associated with the estimation of technical efficiency of individual firms. A survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics is an important part of the paper. ~ This paper is a revision of that presented at the 35th Annual Conference of the Australian Agricultural Economics Society, University of New England, Armidale, 11-14 February, 1991