Technical efficiency in developing country agriculture: a meta-analysis

By A. Thiam, B. Bravo-Ureta, Teodoro E. Rivas. 2001

373 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A meta-analysis is perfonned 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. © 200 l Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Management Science and Operations Research, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6e678c289de9302975db894c233565ac746d304e

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In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

In Management Science and Operations Research

In Soil Science

Citations in the corpus

Technical efficiency in farming: a meta-regression analysis (2007, background): “Although a similar pattern was reported by Thiam et al. (2001), there is no clear explanation for this result (Greene 1993).”
Technical Efficiency of Freshwater Aquaculture and its Determinants in Tripura, India (2009, methodology): “Studies using the Cobb– Douglas functional form yield significantly lower average TE indices than those relying on the translog specification, which implies that more restricted functional forms lead to lower average TE (Thiam et al., 2001).”
Assessing the effects of managerial and production practices on the efficiency of commercial pig farming (2006, neutral): “A further comparative review of frontier studies on agricultural products can be found in Thiam et al., 2001).”
Analyzing technology adoption using microstudies: limitations, challenges, and opportunities for improvement (2006, methodology): “Thiam et al. (2001) used meta-analysis to compare estimates of technical efficiency.”
An application of the DEA double bootstrap to examine sources of efficiency in Bangladesh rice farming (2008, background): “Our analysis adds to the literature that examines the efficiency of rice farming generally (e.g. Thiam et al., 2001) and in Bangladesh specifically (e.g. Banik, 1994; Sharif and Dar, 1996a, b; Wadud and White, 2000; Coelli et al., 2002; Wadud, 2003).”
A non-parametric bootstrap-data envelopment analysis approach for environmental policy planning and management of agricultural efficiency in EU countries (2017, methodology): “The two main approaches to measure efficiency are parametric and non-parametric, and in most cases, both methods achieve highly correlated results (Wadud and White, 2000; Thiam et al., 2001; Alene and Zeller, 2005).”