Efficiency of Rice Farming Households in Vietnam: A DEA with Bootstrap and Stochastic Frontier Application

This study estimates technical efficiency obtained from both Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier approach using household survey data for rice farming households in Vietnam. A bootstrap method is used to provide statistical precision of DEA estimator. Bootstrap methods have not commonly used in empirical analysis despite being an important statistical tool for improving the estimation precision. Technical efficiency is modeled as a function of household and production factors. The results from the deterministic, semi-parametric and parametric approaches indicate that among other things, technical efficiency is significantly influenced by primary education and regional factors. In addition, scale efficiency analysis indicates that many farms in Vietnam are operating with less than optimal scale of operation, especially in the Center region.