The aim of this paper was to explore if, and in that case how, various preventive measures against mastitis influenced the whole-farm economic outcome, measured as technical efficiency, of a sample of specialised dairy farms in Sweden. In particular, the paper aimed at analysing whether a change to preventive measures applied by fully efficient farms would be a way for inefficient farms to beco...

This paper presents the results of an analysis that predicts the scale efficiency of individual farms and analyses the differences in scale efficiency over time and between farms. Representative farm account data for 1985–2006 are used, and the study applies stochastic frontier analysis using an input distance–function approach. The results show that pig farms have improved their input scale ef...

Technical efficiency of wheat farms in eastern England is measured through the estimation of a stochastic frontier production function using panel data for the 1993–1997 crop years. Variations in the technical efficiency index across production units are explained through a number of managerial and farm characteristic variables following Battese and Coelli (1995) [Empirical Econ. 20, 325–332] a...

This paper examines the factors affecting the participation of farm households in farm land rental markets with particular focus on the impact of the land reform. The operational outcomes of such market participation are also analysed. The study used a panel dataset of farm households surveyed before and after the land reform with Random Effect Tobit model. The analysis showed that the land ref...

An attempt was made to determine the overall farm-specific technical efficiency or inefficiency of onion farms of Bangladesh. Farm-level data were used for the estimation of the parameters of Cobb-Douglas stochastic frontier production function. The model for technical inefficiency effects in the stochastic frontier included age, experience, education, and farm size. The elasticity of output wi...

Efficiency in the use of resources stream-lined for expected conditions could lead to reduced system diversity and consequently endanger resilience. We tested the hypothesis of a trade-off between farm resource-use efficiency and land-use diversity. We applied stochastic frontier production models to assess the dependence of resource-use-efficiency on land-use diversity as illustrated by the Sh...

AGR/CA/APM(2001)24/FINAL 2 Foreword Governments in OECD countries intervene in agriculture with a view to achieving a wide range of economic and social objectives, in particular the improvement of farm household incomes. This study investigates how efficient some of the most commonly used policy interventions — referred to as the transfer efficiency of support measures with respect to income — ...

The cost of milk production by farm size was decomposed into frontier and efficiency components with a stochastic cost curve using data on 755 USA dairy farms from the year 2000. The estimated frontier function is much flatter than the composite cost curve, and although the frontier cost of production decreases with farm size, that cost reduction is not as pronounced as a cost curve that includ...

This essay assesses the relationship between farm size and productivity. Both parametric and nonparametric methods are used to derive efficiency measures. Smaller farms are found to have higher net farm income per hectare, and to be more technically efficient, than larger farms. JEL Classifications: Q12, O12