Farm Technology and Technical Efficiency: Evidence from Four Regions in China

Zhuo (Adam) Chen, Wallace Huffman and Scott Rozelle

Staff General Research Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: In this paper we fit stochastic frontier production functions to data for Chinese farms grouped into each of four regions—North, Northeast, East, and Southwest—over 1995-1999. These frontier production functions are shown to have statistically different structures, and the marginal product information shows overuse of chemical inputs in the East and capital services in the North. Labor also has a low marginal product. Next, we use the data and the production parameters to create technical efficiency scores for each of the farms and then standardize them. Standardized technical efficiency is shown to have the same structure across regions and to be related to the age of the farmer, land fragmentation, and the village migration rate, controlling for year dummies and village or regional fixed effects.

Keywords: Household farm; Labor migration; Land fragmentation; Stochastic production frontier; Technical efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C2 L2 O1 P2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cna, nep-dev, nep-eff and nep-sea
Date: 2006-05-01
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Related works:
Journal Article: Farm technology and technical efficiency: Evidence from four regions in China (2009)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:12605

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