annual and cropping season environmental production conditions effects on smallholder technical efficiency in sub saharan africa evidence from ethiopia this article investigates the impact of environmental production conditions on smallholder farmers technical efficiency in ethiopia for wheat maize and sorghum farming we use a household panel data set with annual and cropping season environmental production conditions to estimate the technical efficiency scores the results show that including environmental production conditions in the stochastic frontier has a significant impact on farmers technical efficiency scores technical efficiency scores improve when environmental production conditions are incorporated in the stochastic frontier thus accounting for environmental production conditions reduces the inefficiencies that otherwise may be attributed to the characteristics of smallholder farmers

technical efficiency in the spanish agrofood industry abstract this study estimates frontier production functions with cross section data for the spanish agrofood industry by using deterministic and stochastic parametric approaches we compute the individual technical efficiency for each firm compare the results and explain the relationship between technical efficiency and other relevant quantitative variables the results indicate that the spanish agrofood industry has a level of efficiency between 68 and 93 which means that it is potentially capable of increasing production without increasing its consumption of inputs this efficiency level is positively related to factor productivity and unitary labour costs

an examination of economic efficiency of russian crop production in the reform period this article examines economic efficiency ee of crop production of russian corporate farms for 1993 1998 ee declined over the period due to declines in both technical and allocative efficiency technical efficiency te results indicate that output levels could have been maintained while reducing overall input use by an average of 29 31 in 1998 depending on the method used while the allocative efficiency ae results show that costs could have been reduced about 30 the ee scores show that russian corporate farms could have increased efficiency by reducing the use of all inputs particularly fertilizer and fuel russian agriculture inherited machinery intensive technology from the soviet era which may be inappropriate given the relative abundance of labor in the post reform environment investment constraints have prevented the replacement of old machinery intensive technology with smaller scale machines that allow for a more labor using technology jel classification p2 q1

specific experience household structure and intergenerational transfers farm family land and labor arrangements in developing countries data from indian rural household survey was used to test th hypothesis that the coexistence in traditional rural societies of extended intergenerational families infrequent land sales and high reliance on family members as farm laborers is the result of the economic advantages which accrue from the knowledge gained by farming a particular ploy of land over a long period of time the land specific experience of elderly members of a intergenerational household who farmed the land as a child and then as an adult are expecially critical in adverse weather years most previous investigators attributed the existence of multigenerational households the use of family members rather than hired laboreds and the infrequency of land sales to deficiencies in the market i e labor market imperfections and an absence of capital insurance and asset markets in the present investigations these same characteristics are viewed as having an economic advantages a model for estimating the contribution of the experience of the elderly household members to agricultural profits was developed and applied to data from a 3 year panel study of 2900 indian rural farm households the data was collected between 1968 71 by the national council of applied economic research the survey collected information on farm profits farm inputs demographic characteristics and the effects of weather conditions on profits a major limitation of the study was a lack of information on the duration of land ownership age of household members was substituted as a proxy for duration of ownership findings were consistent withe the hypothesis in poor agricultural years gross returns for households which contained an elderly household member were greater than the gross returns for comparable households which did not contain an elderly member the economic advantages of specific knowledge embodied in the experienced elderly farmer were comparable to the economic advantages which accrued to households whose members were more educated the hypothesis cannot fully explain the existence of intergenerational families since there is a relatively large proportion of such families among nonfarm families in many countries including india findings suggest that intergenerational families may provide for more occupational diversity and thereby reduce income risks the specific experience hypothesis has policy implications if technological changes are introduced the value of specific experience may be lost and the frequency of intergenerational households may decline the hypothesis may also explain why farmers are reluctant to agree to land redistribution and consolidation schemes this reluctance may disappear after sufficient technological change has occurred

evaluating the impact of agricultural extension on farms performance in crete a nonneutral stochastic frontier approach this article attempts to integrate the production and the efficiency based approaches for evaluating the impact of extension on farms performance for this purpose the nonneutral production frontier model is used and the empirical analysis refers to a sample of farms from crete greece the empirical results support the proposed formulation instead of either the production or the efficiency based formulations as extension was found to have a statistically significant effect on closing both the technology and management gaps public and private extension services were found to be competitive in the production function and complementary in the technical inefficiency effect function in addition farms using both public and private extension services achieved a higher degree of technical efficiency than those using either public or private extension services and farms with no extension services were found to be the least efficient

is corporate social responsibility performance associated with tax avoidance this study examines whether corporate social responsibility performance is associated with corporate tax avoidance employing a matched sample of 434 firm year observations i e 217 tax avoidant and 217 non tax avoidant firm year observations from the kinder lydenberg and domini database over the period 2003 2009 our logit regression results show that the higher the level of csr performance of a firm the lower the likelihood of tax avoidance our results indicate that more socially responsible firms are likely to display less tax avoidance finally the results from our additional analysis show that the csr categories community relations and diversity represent particularly important elements of csr performance that reduce tax avoidance

profit efficiency among basmati rice producers in pakistan punjab farm specific profit inefficiency among basmati rice producers was estimated from a variable coefficient profit frontier the mean level of inefficiency at farm resources and price levels was 28 with a wide range 5 87 average loss of profit was rs 1 222 per hectare socioeconomic factors related to profit loss were the farm household s education nonagricultural employment and a credit constraint institutional determinants of profit loss were a water constraint and the late application of fertilizer punjab wide benefits of increasing farmer s profit efficiency are large a 25 reduction in profit loss among basmati rice producers may generate over rs 240 million in extra profits each rice season rice is a major export commodity for pakistan generating about 2 5 billion pakistan rupees rs annually or 20 of foreign exchange earnings from commodity trade in the early 1980s two varieties dominate in pakistan s international trade in rice basmati 370 a high quality long grained aromatic variety and the medium long grained irri 6 distinct export markets exist for these rices over 90 of the basmati is exported to oil rich middle eastern nations while the mediumlong varieties are mainly marketed in southeast asia in 1983 the export price of basmati was about rs 7 900 per ton while the price of medium long grained varieties averaged rs 2 700 per ton pakistan has a comparative advantage in the international market for basmati but probably not for medium long grained rices azhar and mamhud historically pakistan had a near monopoly in international trade in basmati but now faces increased competition from thailand and the united states efferson therefore pakistan must strive to increase the efficiency of basmati production to retain its comparative advantage and competitive edge in foreign rice markets basmati 370 is a pure line selection made in

market structure and the empirical specification of profit margins we present evidence from a panel of u k manufacturing industries to test the sensitivity of the margins concentration relationship to specification changes in the dependent variable instrumental variable estimates demonstrate that a positive association between profit margins and concentration is contingent on how the margin is formulated

contract farmer and poultry farm efficiency in bangladesh a data envelopment analysis the objective of this article is to determine the efficiency of the poultry farm in bangladesh and to assess the influence of contract farming system using a data envelopment analysis seventy five commercial poultry farms 25 and 50 independent and contract farms respectively were randomly selected the results reveal that efficiency scores vary across sample farms to explain some of these variations the efficiency scores were regressed on some human capital variables and farming system using a tobit model the study also estimates elasticities to provide the information on the magnitude of the influence of variables on technical efficiency te allocative efficiency ae and economic efficiency ee the results show that the contracting system is positively and significantly related to the farm s te ae and ee this is expected because under contractual agreement in order to obtain sufficient supplies of the right quality of poultry meat at the right time the company provides technical know how

the impact of credit on peasant productivity and differentiation in nicaragua abstract an endogenous switching regressions framework is used to structure and identify the impact of credit on small farm food production in nicaragua the results which emerge weakly support the hypothesis that credit had a positive impact on production and could be expected to reduce the pattern of structurally unbalanced growth in nicaraguan agriculture however the estimated impact is of a form which implies a process of differentiation and unequal growth in the peasant sector in the wake of the new opportunities afforded by credit

effects of farm size education and off farm income on productive efficiency of dairy farmers in utah a stochasitc frontier approach this study is primarily concerned with investigating the technical allocative and scale inefficiency of owner operators of dairy farms in utah a stochastic production frontier has been applied to analyze these inefficiencies the results indicate that there is positive association between years of education and productivity of labor and capital productivity is also found to be negatively related to off farm income regarding the effects of farm size on efficiency it is found that large farms are the most efficient of all sizes considered separate estimates of technical allocative and scale inefficiencies indicate that large and medium sized farms are technically more efficient than small farms large farms on average are found to be performing much better than medium sized and small farms so far as allocative and scale inefficiency are concerned copyright 1989 by mit press

the impact of soil conservation and output diversification on farm income in central american hillside farming this article analyzes the determinants of farm income among hillside farmers participating in natural resource management projects in el salvador and honduras the farm income function was evaluated using a system of equations in which income is determined simultaneously by the farmer s decision to adopt soil conservation technologies and by the level of diversification number of agricultural activities on the farm the database used comes from surveys administered to 678 beneficiaries of these projects during 2002 the econometric results suggest that all the variables related directly to land use i e output diversification soil conservation practices and structures and the adoption of forestry systems have a positive and statistically significant association with farm income also farmers who own land enjoy higher farm incomes than those who do not the results indicate that when investing in natural resource management projects governments and multilateral development agencies should pay close attention to output diversification land tenure and human capital formation as effective instruments in increasing farm income

measuring technical efficiency in the greek agricultural sector this paper measures the degree of technical efficiency of greek farms at discrete points in time stochastic frontier production functions are estimated from four annual farm accountancy data network fadn surveys of the 1992 1995 period from the results a measure of technical efficiency is calculated for each farm for each year the four distributions of technical efficiency values are examined and compared all four samples show a wide range of farm specific technical efficiency but efficiency is improving over the period the paper also presents frontier estimates for small and large farms classified according to economic size in that case technical efficiency measures are calculated and their distributions are examined and compared the results show that large farms are more efficient than small farms however efficiency is improving in both size farms over the period in general the results of this study indicate that there is substantial scope for improving technical efficiency of greek farms

technical allocative and economic efficiencies in swine production in hawaii a comparison of parametric and nonparametric approaches abstract technical allocative and economic efficiency measures are derived for a sample of swine producers in hawaii using the parametric stochastic efficiency decomposition technique and nonparametric data envelopment analysis dea efficiency measures obtained from the two frontier approaches are compared firm specific factors affecting productive efficiencies are also analyzed finally swine producers potential for reducing cost through improved efficiency is also examined under the specification of variable returns to scale vrs the mean technical allocative and economic efficiency indices are 75 9 75 8 and 57 1 respectively for the parametric approach and 75 9 80 3 and 60 3 for dea while for the constant returns to scale crs they are 74 5 73 9 and 54 7 respectively for the parametric approach and 64 3 71 4 and 45 7 for dea thus the results from both approaches reveal considerable inefficiencies in swine production in hawaii the removal of potential outliers increases the technical efficiencies in the parametric approach and allocative efficiencies in dea but overall contrary to popular belief the results obtained from dea are found to be more robust than those from the parametric approach the estimated mean technical and economic efficiencies obtained from the parametric technique are higher than those from dea for crs models but quite similar for vrs models while allocative efficiencies are generally higher in dea however the efficiency rankings of the sample producers based on the two approaches are highly correlated with the highest correlation being achieved for the technical efficiency rankings under crs based on mean comparison and rank correlation analyses the return to scale assumption is found to be crucial in assessing the similarities or differences in efficiency measures obtained from the two approaches analysis of the role of various firm specific factors on productive efficiency shows that farm size has strong positive effects on efficiency levels similarly farms producing market hogs are more efficient than those producing feeder pigs based on these results by operating at the efficient frontier the sample swine producers would be able to reduce their production costs by 38 46 depending upon the method and returns to scale considered

efficiency in agricultural production the case of peasant farmers in eastern paraguay abstract this paper contributes to the productivity literature in developing country agriculture by quantifying the level of efficiency for a sample of peasant farmers from eastern paraguay a stochastic efficiency decomposition methodology is used to derive technical allocative and economic efficiency measures separately for cotton and cassava an average economic efficiency of 40 1 for cotton and of 52 for cassava is found which suggests considerable room for productivity gains for the farms in the sample through better use of available resources given the state of technology gains in output through productivity growth have become increasingly important to paraguay as the opportunities to bring additional virgin lands into cultivation have significantly diminished in recent years no clear strategy to improve farm productivity could be gleaned from an examination of the relationship between efficiency and various socioeconomic variables one possible explanation for this finding is the existence of a stage of development threshold below which there is no consistent relationship between socioeconomic variables and productivity if this is the case then our results suggest that this sample of paraguayan peasants are yet to reach such a threshold hence improvements in educational and extension services for example would be needed to go beyond this threshold once this is accomplished additional productivity gains would be obtained by further investments in human capital and related factors

the firm size farm size and transaction costs the case of hazelnut farms in turkey this study analyzes the effects of transaction costs on the size of hazelnut farms in turkey the study finds that higher land slope and higher variance of rain as transaction cost increasing natural effects lead to smaller hazelnut land holdings high slope and weather variation can increase the costs of monitoring the laborers make moving inputs or output up and down harder limit the use of machinery and reduce contractual performance of labor contracts for farm production functions land is a complex input with measurable interactions with nature contrary to common production theory approaches that take natural properties of land as given the study develops a production function that incorporates natural properties such as slope and rain variance the study utilizes two separate data sets for the estimations the first data set explores the characteristics of hazelnut farmers while the second one analyzes the regional characteristics of hazelnut farms

efficiency differentials in peasant agriculture and their implications for development policies this paper reviews the theoretical and empirical work on allocative efficiency in traditional agriculture and presents a new study of technical efficiency among tanzanian cotton farmers the theoretical arguments are shown to apply primarily in a competitive context that differs significantly from that in which peasant farms operate re analysis of earlier empirical studies shows that on average the marginal value products of inputs differ by more than 40 per cent from the marginal factor costs to which they should be equated under allocative efficiency our own study among tanzanian cotton farmers in geita district reveals that output could be increased by 51 per cent if all farmers achieved those levels of technical efficiency that were in fact achieved by the best farmers in the sample using the same inputs and technologies that the less efficient used these results indicate that the efficiency hypothesis may not be applicable to much of peasant agriculture and that development policies might fruitf

externality effects of education dynamics of the adoption and diffusion of an innovation in rural ethiopia abstract this article investigates the role of schooling at the household and community levels in the adoption and diffusion of agricultural innovations in rural ethiopia we find that household level education is important to the timing of adoption but less crucial to the question of whether a household has ever adopted fertilizer since those without schooling may eventually copy the educated community level education substitutes for low levels of household education encouraging uneducated farmers to adopt sooner than would be predicted in the absence of educated neighbors moreover community level education is complementary to household education in determining which farmers will eventually adopt thus evidence is presented to suggest that there are two externality effects educated farmers are early innovators providing an example that may be copied by less educated farmers and educated farmers are better able to copy those who innovate first enhancing diffusion of the new technology more wide

poor but allocatively efficient evidence from the eastern amazon this research empirically investigates the well known poor but efficient hypothesis formulated by schultz 1964 assuming that small scale farmers in developing countries are reasonably efficient in allocating their scarce resources by responding positively to price incentives deviating from schultz it is assumed here that scale effects explain a considerable proportion of small scale farmers relative efficiency the theoretical underpinnings of the scale efficiency concept are briefly reviewed before a normalized generalized leontief gl profit function is modeled by using its output supply and input demand system to capture the joint production of cassava flour and maize by a sample of small scale farmers in the bragantina region of the eastern amazon brazil the discussion of theoretical consistency and functional flexibility is considered by imposing convexity on the gl profit framework the empirical results confirm our revised hypothesis that small farmers in traditional development settings are poor but allocatively efficient by clearly suggesting considerable inefficiency with respect to the scale of operations

education and technical efficiency in small farm production differences in technical efficiency are observed as differences in the physical output produced from a given bundle of physical inputs these differences are not considered in the traditional theory of the firm wherein the output resulting from a particular input bundle is specified as the maximum possible according to the latest technology presupposing technical efficiency the theory of the firm concentrates on allocative efficiency on the choice of the particular input bundle that maximizes profit given prices and the technically efficient production function the best utilization of any particular input combination according to henderson and quandt is a technical not an economic problem 1 economic theory notwithstanding empirical studies of production must take into account differences in the utilization of inputs since in the real world producers are not all equally efficient it is conceptually convenient to divide the output variation observed over a number of firms into two parts one that stems from variation in physical inputs and another that reflects differences in technical efficiency timmer has developed an approach by which to compare the technical efficiency of firms using linear programming he determines the function that relates physical inputs to output for the most efficient of a sample of firms in other words he finds the production surface that is the envelope of all the observation points he calls this function the technical frontier the relative tech

wage pressure bargaining and price cost margins in uk manufacturing to the extent that union employer bargaining is efficient price cost margins in oligopolistic industries are predicted to depend on wage rents and on the elasticity of substitution between wages and employment in union preferences unanticipated wage inflation will also affect margins cross section and time series analysis of price cost margins in u k manufacturing industries finds that margins tend to be eroded by the level of wage rents and are invariant to the rate of wage inflation copyright 1990 by blackwell publishing ltd

how to define and study farmers management capacity theory and use in agricultural economics textbooks and articles on farm management stress the importance of the management capacity of the farmer with respect to his farm results however explicit definitions together with an elaboration of this concept are hard to find in this article aspects of management capacity are grouped into 1 personal aspects consisting of farmer s drives and motivations farmer s abilities and capabilities and his biographical facts such as age and education and 2 aspects of the decision making process consisting of practices and procedures with respect to planning implementation and control of decisions at the farm empirical studies on the role of management capacity in relation to farm results are reviewed frontier production functions are widely used in recent literature to estimate technical and economic efficiency of farms however in explaining differences in efficiency most studies do not go further than adding a biographical variable e g level of education this study concludes that a next step would be to include aspects of the decision making process longitudinal on farm observations which give possibilities for studying the dynamic aspects of the decision making are suggested to further analyze the concept of management capacity

an empirical study of cereal crop production and technical efficiency of private farmers in ethiopia a mixed fixed random coefficients approach in this paper we use a fixed random coefficients regression model to analyse data for cereal growing small scale farmers in efficiency results show that land size is a major constraint and only small changes in cultivated area and land quality yield relatively high increments to output larger farms are relatively less productive everything else being equal human capital in the form of literacy and experience are found to affect productivity positively our findings show a high degree of farm specific technical inefficiency with regard to the inputs we find high degrees of input specific technical inefficiency especially so for labour and fertilizer the age structure of the household environmental factors and education are found to be weakly correlated with efficiency furthermore sharecropping is found to be positively correlated with technical efficiency

alternative stochastic specifications of the frontier production function in the analysis of agricultural credit programs and technical efficiency abstract the effect of subsidized credit on the technical efficiency of traditional farmers in southeastern brazil is analyzed under two alternative stochastic specifications for the production frontier it is found that the choice of stochastic specification significantly influences inferences regarding the effect of subsidized credit on measured technical efficiency

input contracts market structure and the empirical specification of price cost margins abstract we examine the implications for the empirical specification of the margins concentration relationship of different forms of contracting for intermediate inputs we offer an alternative explanation why the results of profit margin regressions depend on whether the margin is deflated by gross output or net output 1997 elsevier science s a

technical efficiency in developing country agriculture a meta analysis abstract a meta analysis is performed to review empirical estimates of technical efficiency te in developing country agriculture the objective of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of the factors that influence estimates of mean te a data set of 51 observations of te from 32 studies is used in order to test if specific characteristics of the data and econometric specifications account for systematic differences in the efficiency estimates results using the two limit tobit procedure indicate that factors such as primal versus dual number of fixed inputs and number of variable inputs increase average te estimates on the other hand using the cobb douglas functional form and cross sectional data yields a lower level of te other factors including the number of variables in the model crop type stochastic versus deterministic frontiers and sample size do not seem to significantly affect estimates of te across studies

business cycles and the relationship between concentration and price cost margins using a newly constructed panel data base we examine changes in price cost margins in 284 manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1981 a key finding is a dramatic narrowing of the spread between the margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries over this period we provide evidence that this narrowing is a result of the greater sensitivity of price cost margins in more concentrated industries to demand fluctuations this finding is robust to the inclusion of other industry variables and to measures of import competition the results indicate that cross sectional estimates of the concentration margins relationship are likely to be both biased and misleading

resource rent taxation and benchmarking a new perspective for the swiss hydropower sector the electricity generation in switzerland is mainly based on hydropower 55 of total production the exploitation of water in the hydropower sector can generate significant so called resource rents these are defined by the surplus return above the value of capital labor materials and energy used to exploit hydropower in switzerland hydropower producers pay to the state a fixed fee per kw gross capacity with this system the substantial differences in costs revenues and in the production characteristics of the hydropower plants are not taken into account in this context the following paper has two main goals 1 to discuss the introduction in the swiss hydropower sector of a new payment system based on a resource rent tax 2 to propose a combination of a rrt system with a benchmarking analysis of the production cost obtained through the estimation of a stochastic frontier variable cost function we estimate a true random effects stochastic frontier variable cost function using panel data in order to overcome the asymmetric information problem in addition using the information on cost efficiency of the single companies we show how to introduce in the rrt scheme a benchmark system which gives incentives to minimize the production costs

education and technical efficiency during the green revolution in pakistan tion is more likely to arise during disequilibrium caused by technical change in agriculture this may be because technical change renders the existing cultural practices obsolete or inadequate and calls for an adjustment a more educated farmer is supposed to make the required adjustment more quickly this article tests the foregoing hypothesis in pakistan agriculture during the green revolution when introduction of new crop varieties disturbed the prevailing equilibrium for this purpose a production function approach is used and the analysis is conducted not only for the new crop varieties but also for their traditional counterparts the results lend support to the hypothesis by showing that the worker effect is stronger for new crop varieties than it is for traditional ones the article is divided into five sections in the next section a brief review of the literature is presented section iii presents the hypothesis and discusses the methodology used for the analysis the results and their policy implications are discussed in section iv and section v concludes the article ii brief literature review in a pioneering study exploring the economic effects of education z griliches used production function analysis to highlight the contri

the determination of profit margins in uk manufacturing this paper examines the determinants of profit margins in 91 u k manufacturing industries over the period 1983 86 it considers how the inclusion of labor market characteristics in empirical industrial organization specifications affects the estimated concentration margins relationship the empirical work pays detailed attention to the endogenous nature of variables derived from structural industrial organization models the authors report instrumental variables estimates of margins equations in which there emerges a significant role for labor market characteristics indeed both unionization and industrywide unemployment are found to depress profit margins the impact of concentration is seen to be biased downward when these variables are omitted

profits from self employment the case of cote d ivoire abstract in the past self employed workers were often viewed as less productive individuals yet recent research has indicated that the nonagricultural self employed fill a niche in the economy that large industry cannot the goods and services they produce may well be a necessary part of the infrastructure within which large scale industry can flourish this paper examines the productivity of nonagricultural family enterprises in cote d ivoire marginal returns to self employed labor are somewhat less than the wage rate of equivalent salaried workers capital yields extremely high returns in self employment possibly above 100 per month assuming limited access to credit the self employed may do well by establishing enterprises and gaining the large returns to capital that offset the somewhat lower returns to labor

technology and efficiency in a panel of italian dairy farms an sgm restricted cost function approach this article employs a short term specification of the symmetric generalised mcfadden sgm cost function capable of accommodating quasi fixed factors and variable returns temporary equilibrium and scale economies are investigated while maintaining the consistency of the estimated model with microeconomic theory and approximation properties it also makes use of a two step procedure to estimate first the technology parameters and then time varying efficiency at farm level no distributional assumptions are required on efficiency as we consider a fixed effect model a balanced panel of italian dairy farms during the years from 1980 to 1992 serves as the case study the results suggest a rigid productive structure during the pre and post quota period moreover italian milk producers are found to exhibit considerable excess capacity and rather low input technical efficiency

modern technology and economic efficiency of philippine rice farmers farmer s recent study and frankel s review of griffin s book suggest that belief in a gap between actual and potential agricultural production in developing countries has regained currency in the development community timmer s concern with measuring technical efficiency and the attempts of shapiro and miiller to relate modernization and information to technical efficiency focus on differences in productivity among farmers as indicators of such a gap 2 among technologists the gap hypothesis has a number of faithful adherents including the former director of the international rice research institute irri who could not understand why the asian farmer who had adopted the new rice varieties was not doing better somehow he felt that the rice scientists who had obtained yields of 5 to 10 metric tons per hectare on the irri farm still could not explain why so many filipino farmers for example obtained on the average less than one metric ton per hectare increase in yield after shifting from the traditional to the high yielding varieties 3 in response to these persistent questions in 1974 scientists at irri began a research project to measure the yield gap and to understand the factors responsible for it the yield gap was defined by biologists as the difference under farmers conditions between the maximum yield possible

dairy farm efficiency measurement using stochastic frontiers and neoclassical duality this paper presents a stochastic efficiency decomposition model based on kopp and diewert s deterministic methodology the stochastic model is used to analyze technical economic and allocative efficiency for a sample of new england dairy farms the results suggest that mean economic efficiency for the farmers in the sample is about 70 and that on average there is little difference between technical 83 0 and allocative 84 6 efficiency analyses of the relationship between efficiency and four socioeconomic variables farm size education extension and experience reveal that despite some statistically significant associations efficiency levels are not markedly affected by these variables

a generalized measure of technical efficiency with the growing interest in the theory of the frontier production function the central analysis is the measurement of technical efficiency however the methodology has not been tested vigorously as has that of the conventional production function with few exceptions studies to date have used cross section data to measure mean technical efficiency of sample firms through the frontier production function this study uses panel data to measure not only the mean technical efficiency but also the individual firm specific technical efficiencies of sample indian farms relative to the frontier production function further it identifies the factors causing variations in individual technical efficiencies

the construct validity of the kinder lydenberg domini social performance ratings data carroll 1991 encouraged researchers in social issues management sim to continue to measure corporate social performance csp from a variety of different perspectives utilizing a variety of different measures in addition wolfe and aupperle 1991 and others have asserted that there is no single best way to measure csp and that multiple measures and perspectives help develop the field however pfeffer 1993 suggest that a lack of consistent measurement has constrained organization studies and by implication the field of social issues management in its development as a field it may be in the best interest of social issues management researchers to try to development a common body of measures and data recently kinder lydenberg and domini co kld a social choice investment advisory firm has made available their social performance database the kld data have potential to become a widely accepted set of csp measures the purpose of this paper is to present a construct validity study comparing the kld data to other measures of csp

factors affecting the technical efficiency among smallholder farmers in the slash and burn agriculture zone of cameroon abstract this paper estimates technical efficiency among small holder farmers in the slash and burn agriculture zone of cameroon and identifies sources of inefficiency using detailed survey data obtained from 450 farmers over 15 villages throughout 2001 2002 growing season we find that the mean levels of technical efficiency are 77 73 and 75 respectively for groundnut monocrop maize monocrop and maize groundnut farming systems suggesting existence of substantial gains in output and or decreases in cost with available technology and resources the efficiency differences are explained significantly by credit soil fertility social capital distance of the plot from the access road and extension services policy recommendations are drawn from these findings

vertical integration input contracts and the margins concentration relationship in recent years it has become common when specifying empirical price cost margins to use net output as opposed to the more usual gross output in the denominator it has been noted that with gross output as the denominator the point estimate on concentration from a regression of margins on concentration is lower than with net output as the denominator and the estimate is frequently insignificant the possible explanations that have been put forward to explain this empirical phenomenon are discussed and evidence is presented using data from the uk census of production and the uk input output tables neither theoretical nor empirical justification is found for the use of the adjusted margin but instead it is suggested that the empirical phenomenon is caused by the omission of appropriate variables to control for contracting relations in purchasing intermediate inputs

cheating ourselves the economics of tax evasion no government can announce a tax system and then rely on taxpayers sense of duty to remit what is owed some dutiful people will undoubtedly pay what they owe but many others will not over time the ranks of the dutiful will shrink as they see how they are being taken advantage of by the others thus paying taxes must be made a legal responsibility of citizens with penalties attendant on noncompliance but even in the face of those penalties substantial tax evasion exists and always has the history of taxation is replete with episodes of evasion often notable for their inventiveness during the third century many wealthy romans buried their jewelry or stocks of gold coin to evade the luxury tax and homeowners in eighteenth century england temporarily bricked up their fireplaces to escape notice of the hearth tax collector webber and wildavsky 1986 p 141 this essay reviews what is known about the magnitude nature and determinants of tax evasion with an emphasis on the u s income tax alm 1999 andreoni erard and feinstein 1998 and slemrod and yitzhaki 2002 offer more comprehensive recent reviews of the literature it then places this information into a conceptual and policy context

technical efficiency of alternative farming systems the case of greek organic and conventional olive growing farms abstract olive growing is a major farming activity in greek agriculture this paper analyzes empirically the technical efficiency of organic and conventional olive growing farms using a stochastic production frontier methodology and a translog functional specification findings indicate that the organic olive growing farms examined exhibit a higher degree of technical efficiency relative to their production frontier than do conventional olive growing farms reasons may include lower profit margins and restrictions on inputs permitted thus forcing organic farmers to be more cautious with input use however both input and output oriented technical efficiency scores are still relatively low for both types of olive farming thus there is considerable scope for cost reducing and farm income improvement in both farming modes this could prove crucial for the long run viability and the future course of the sector

taboo or technical issue an empirical assessment of taxation in sustainability reports abstract prior literature offers mixed evidence on the existence of a link between corporate taxation and corporate social responsibility csr this article contributes to this debate by examining the level of tax disclosure in sustainability reports by firms listed in the united states the united kingdom and germany from 2007 to 2012 the aim is to offer micro level evidence of whether firms themselves perceive corporate tax payments as being part of their csr on the basis of a hand collected 540 firm year dataset of ninety publicly listed firms the article shows that the level of tax disclosure was rather low however it did increase over time and was most prevalent in the united kingdom moreover the reports indicate considerable variation in attitudes toward taxation overall the widespread silence on tax issues and a non uniform treatment of taxation in sustainability reports underline the complex role of tax payments when it comes to csr examination of determinants of disclosure shows that firms with lower effective tax rates negative media coverage in tax matters and industry specific stakeholder pressure were generally more inclined to disclose tax information which is in line with predictions based on stakeholder and legitimacy theory finally the article discusses the importance of cultural and social norms when it comes to tax related sustainability reporting and provides theoretical as well as regulatory implications

measuring and explaining scale efficiency with the parametric approach the case of greek tobacco growers estimates of technical and scale inefficiencies of tobacco farms in greece during the period 1991 1995 are obtained by using the parametric approach the degree of technical efficiency was found to be lower than the degree of scale efficiency and thus a greater portion of overall inefficiency is due to producing below the production frontier than to producing at an inefficient scale in addition the vast majority of farms in the sample exhibited suboptimal scale implying that output should be expanded to reach the optimal scale empirical results are provided to determine the impact of various socioeconomic demographic and geoclimatic indicators on technical and scale efficiency

economic efficiency in polish peasant farming an international perspective one decade following the market transition in poland the agricultural sector still exhibits low productivity policy makers often describe the sector as fragmented and inefficient to understand why small scale farming in poland is inefficient despite longstanding secure property rights a survey of economic efficiency in southern agriculture was conducted and compared with limited studies of efficiency in poland the most important issues particularly related to farm size and efficiency are price risk uncertainty and low rural development comparative studies across regions with varying institutional arrangements and economic organization are powerful but must be made carefully and critically

farmer education and farm efficiency in nepal the role of schooling extension services and cognitive skills this paper reports on the analysis of data from nepal the farm households surveyed were chosen so that about half were in a region exposed to the newly introduced training and visit t v extension service while the other half were exposed to less intensive traditional extension services thus in addition to providing information on the mechanisms of education s effects on efficiency this study evaluates the impact of t v extension as introduced in nepal our study finds a positive effect of education on efficiency for the three major crops but only with wheat was the effect statistically significant at standard levels there is definite evidence of a threshold level of education 6 years below which education s impact is small and above which the effect is important the effect of education on efficiency is important only for adapting to changing circumstances we found no evidence that education s effects should be attributed even in part to family background correlates or to a measure we had of ability the farmer s numeracy did affect productivity in wheat production our measures of modernity and agricultural knowledge were uncorrelated with efficiency

capacity and competition empirical evidence on uk panel data following d kreps and j scheinkman 1983 it is common to view the difference between cournot and bertrand competition as depending on production capacity bertrand undercutting is only feasible if firms have capacity to serve the market gained if firms are capacity constrained the cournot model is more appropriate this paper tests the capacity and competition idea by looking at the relationship between profits and capacity constraints if capacity constrained firms become more cournot like it should be positive using survey data on capacity constraints merged into a panel industry data set for the united kingdom the authors find a robust positive relationship copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

firm and product specific technical efficiencies in a multiproduct cycle system measures of technical efficiency were estimated using stochastic translog production frontiers for a sample of farmers operating in a rainfed area in india these estimates were farm specific as opposed to being based on deviation from an average sample efficiency in contrast to other studies farm specific efficiency estimates were obtained for farmers growing multiple outputs in which the production levels were interrelated and each product was competing for the farm s inputs the results of the study show that on average sample participants can increase their farm output by about 30 per cent 35 per cent 28 per cent and 32 per cent respectively in the production of rice corn and rice by efficient use of existing inputs rather than by incurring any additional expenditures on inputs the empirical results imply that the potential for increasing farm outputs varies widely across farms

taxes and firm size abstract firm size has been used as a proxy for the firm s political costs and hence managers proclivity to choose income reducing accounting procedures this study provides additional evidence on this topic by examining the association between firm size and effective corporate tax rates the latter are one component of a firm s political costs the roughly fifty largest u s exchange listed firms in particular oil and gas companies and manufacturing firms have significantly higher worldwide tax rates than other firms these higher tax rates are observed primarily after the implementation of the u s 1969 tax reform act and after the opec countries raised their tax rates on u s oil producers the findings which are insensitive to alternative sources of data alternative measures of firm size and alternative measures of effective tax rates are consistent with the use in previous studies of firm size as a proxy for the firm s political costs

frontier production functions and technical efficiency a survey of empirical applications in agricultural economics abstract the modelling and estimation of frontier production functions has been an important area of econometric research during the last two decades forsund 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

the measurement of productive efficiency a reconsideration the purpose of this paper is to generalize the farrell indexes of productive efficiency to nonhomothetic production technologies and at the same time maintain the cost interpretation of the farrell measures since the generalized indexes rely heavily on recent developments in the estimation of frontier cost and production functions several frontier models are reviewed in addition to generalized indexes of technical allocative and overall productive efficiency a variety of single factor efficiency measures are discussed the applicability of the proposed efficiency measures is illustrated with a numerical example of electric power generation

efficiency and technical progress in traditional and modern agriculture evidence from rice production in china abstract productive efficiency for chinese hybrid and conventional rice production is estimated using a dual stochastic frontier efficiency decomposition model results reveal significant differences in technical and allocative efficiency between conventional and hybrid rice production and indicate significant regional efficiency differences in hybrid rice production but not in conventional rice production

agricultural credit programs and production efficiency an analysis of traditional farming in southeastern minas gerais brazil over the past two decades the effectiveness of subsidized credit programs in improving the productivity of traditional farmers in developing countries has been extensively debated this study analyzes the effects of one such program prodemata on the technical and allocative efficiency of traditional farmers in minas gerais brazil the empirical results suggest that prodemata has had no effect on technical efficiency and a slightly negative effect on allocative efficiency

investigating the determinants of household welfare in cote d ivoire to predict the effect of economic policies on household welfare one should first understand which characteristics of households and of the localities in which they live enable them to raise their welfare levels this paper outlines a simple procedure for investigating the determinants of household welfare and demonstrates its use with recent data from cote d ivoire despite the relative simplicity much information is obtained from its use on cross sectional survey data results specific to cote d ivoire include high low returns to education in urban rural areas high benefits from cocoa land relative to coffee land a significant impact on economic welfare from the availability of medical services and no apparent benefits from agricultural extension services

income distribution efficient bargaining and market structure we present an efficient bargaining model in which wage share is negatively associated with product market structure and varies positively with union bargaining strength the model is tested using data from a panel of u k manufacturing industries instrumental variables estimates corroborate a positive negative union bargaining strength concentration effect on labour s income share

analyses of technical efficiency using sdf and dea models evidence from nepalese agriculture alleviation of poverty is a central issue in nepal given the limited stock of land and the infant unorganized manufacturing sector increased demand for food has to be satisfied by improving production efficiency this article examines how this could be achieved stochastic distance function and data envelopment analysis models identify the existence of a high degree of technical inefficiency in nepalese agriculture suggesting that there is a substantial prospect of increasing agricultural productivity using the existing level of inputs and resources more efficiently among the three farm sizes in the data set medium size farmers achieve a higher technical efficiency than large and small farm sizes suggesting that productive efficiency can be increased with the encouragement of creating medium size holdings the observed decreasing returns to scale also implies that productivity gains could be achieved by breaking up of large farms into small family farms the technical inefficiency model suggests the

margins concentration unions and the business cycle theory and evidence for britain abstract a number of recent studies have examined the cyclical relationship between price cost margins concentration and unions u s data has concluded that unions reduce margins margins vary over the cycle and concentration unionisation and the cycle interact in their effect on margins however there is almost no theory to account for these results we propose a simple theory that assumes only that there is overhead labour present at the firm this produces theoretical predictions that can explain these results and discriminate between existing theories we present results of our own using u k panel data and show similar findings to the u s

the empirical specification of price cost margins abstract this paper examines why results for profit margin regressions may depend on whether the margin is deflated by industry sales or value added it attributes disparate results to stage of production effects which occur because the price elasticity of demand is an omitted variable

analysis of production efficiency of beef cow calf farms in alberta this article measures production efficiency across cow calf farms in alberta and examines the sources of variation in efficiency average technical allocative and economic efficiencies are respectively 83 78 and 67 biological efficiency increased conception calving and weaning rates larger herd size higher share of family labour and greater expense for bedding material reduce inefficiency inefficiency was also related to receipt of government subsidies

tax avoidance as a sustainability problem this manuscript proposes that tax avoidance can be better understood and mitigated as a sustainability problem tax avoidance is not just a financial problem for tax authorities but one that erodes critical common spaces necessary for the smooth functioning of regulatory compliance organizational integrity and society defining tax avoidance as a sustainability problem offers a broader and more holistic understanding of the organizational and societal consequences of tax avoidance behavior sustainability is also a mature and legitimized concept that can readily incorporate taxation a variety of established sustainability metrics have the capacity to incorporate anti tax avoidance measures or publicize firms that engage in fair tax practices this manuscript concludes that integrating sustainability principles in conjunction with important extant work on corporate social responsibility and taxation can advance the goals of decreasing the occurrence and acceptability of tax avoidance

location specificity settler type and productive efficiency a study of the mahaweli project in sri lanka increasing agricultural production and the reduction of rural inequality in income distribution are major goals of irrigated land settlement in developing countries we discuss the levels and determinants of observed differences in technical and allocative efficiency among farmers and the resulting inequality in a major irrigated land settlement scheme in sri lanka the analysis is carried out in three seperate stages first stochastic frontier production functions are estimated then farmer specific measures of efficiences are obtained on the basis of these functions finally these efficiency measures are regressed on several explanatory variables differences in human capital endowments among settler types as well as uneven distribution of water are important determinants of farmer efficiency

the measurement and sources of technical inefficiency in the indonesian weaving industry production function models are estimated with a time series of cross section data on indonesian weaving establishments the sources of technical inefficiency are investigated three firm attributes are identified as being potentially related to firm efhciency tbey are firm ownership age and size the importance of these attributes as sources of inefficiency in the indonesian weaving industry is investigated and the implications of the find ings discussed

the corporate social performance financial performance link strategic managers are consistently faced with the decision of how to allocate scarce corporate resources in an environment that is placing more and more pressures on them recent scholarship in strategic management suggests that many of these pressures come directly from sources associated with social issues in management rather than traditional arenas of strategic management using a greatly improved source of data on corporate social performance this paper reports the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance corporate social performance csp is found to be positively associated with prior financial performance supporting the theory that slack resource availability and csp are positively related csp is also found to be positively associated with future financial performance supporting the theory that good management and csp are positively related 1997 by john wiley sons ltd