This paper studies the effects of rural infrastructure development on agricultural production technical efficiency, using data from the second agricultural census of China. Employing Data Envelopment Analysis, this paper first estimates agricultural production technical efficiency of each administrative area of China. A Tobit model is then applied to study the effects on agricultural production...

This study investigates the various influence models of nodes' network centrality in the context of transactional community. Combining the Social Network Analysis (SNA) with Tobit regression, the research indicates that: i) a node's degree centrality (its followers) and betweenness centrality (the number of the shortest paths in which the node is included) have a positive impact on its network ...

In this paper, the question of the location of exporters of manufactured goods within a country is investigated. Based on insights from new trade theory, the new economic geography (NEG) and gravity-equation modelling, an empirical model is specified with agglomeration and increasing returns (the home market effect) and transport costs (proxied by distance) as major determinants of the location...

The technical and allocative efficiency of broadacre farmers in a southern region of Western Australia is investigated over a three-year period. Applying data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) reveals there is some inefficiency in each year, which decreases over time. The distributions of technical efficiency in each year are positively skewed toward higher effic...

This paper examines the impact of family size on household saving. We first study a theoretical life-cycle model that includes finite lifetimes and saving for retirement and in which parents care about the consumption of their dependent children. The model implies a negative relationship between the number of dependent children in the family and the household’s saving rate. Then, we test the mo...

This paper explores the dynamics of smallholder technology adoption, with particular reference to a high-yielding, low-external input rice production method in Madagascar. We present a simple model of technology adoption by farm households in an environment of incomplete financial and land markets. We then use a probit model and a symmetrically trimmed least squares estimation of a dynamic Tobi...

Tax policy encourages charitable contributions during an individual’s life through both the personal income tax and the estate tax. The effect of the income tax on contributions is well known. Because annual charitable contributions reduce the size of an estate, and hence the likely estate tax burden, the estate tax should also affect contributions. Recently, Auten and Joulfaian (1996) studied ...

In several regression applications, a different structural relationship might be anticipated for the higher or lower responses than the average responses. In such cases, quantile regression analysis can uncover important features that would likely be overlooked by traditional mean regression. We develop a Bayesian method for fully nonparametric model-based quantile regression. The approach invo...

fast food has become a prominent feature of diet and has grown into a dominant dietary pattern among youth worldwide. it is difficult to escape noticing the colourful edifice and bill boards of these food outlets, one is probably just around the corner of your street. mr biggs, tastes fried chicken, sweet sensation, big treat, favourite etc. due to competitive nature of the market many of the f...

this study investigates issues on efficiency and elasticity of broiler production in peninsular malaysia. data from 296 broiler farms were subjected to sfa, dea and bootstrap methods for technical efficiency; translog and tobit regression analyses to estimate elasticity of production and determinants of efficiency respectively in broiler production. we found that farmers produce mean efficiency...