Does Farm Size Really Converge? The Role of Unobserved Farm Efficiency

Yuval Dolev and Ayal Kimhi

No 45778, Discussion Papers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Agricultural Economics and Management

Abstract: We analyze the growth of family farms in Israeli cooperative villages between 1981 and 1995, using longitudinal data. We use instrumental variables to account for the endogeneity of initial farm size, and correct for selectivity due to farm survival. We also include a technical efficiency index, derived from the estimation of a stochastic frontier production model, as an explanatory variable. We find that technical efficiency is an important determinant of farm growth, and that not controlling for technical efficiency could seriously bias the results. The size distribution of Israeli family farms is found to be mostly diverging, while without technical efficiency farm growth seemed to be predominantly random.

Keywords: Farm Management; Productivity Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/45778/files/kimhi-dolev.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:huaedp:45778

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.45778

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Agricultural Economics and Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search (aesearch@umn.edu).