PRODUCTIVITY OF DAIRY PRODUCTION IN INDIVIDUAL STATES

Loren W. Tauer and Nazibrola Lordkipanidze

No 21670, 1999 Annual meeting, August 8-11, Nashville, TN from American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association)

Abstract: In a competitive market dairy production will shift to that region which is the most productive. Thus, this paper reports the measurement of productivity of dairy production in the various states of the U.S. using recent Census data and non-parametric Malmquist index techniques. These are total factor productivity measures that do not require the assumption of cost or profit maximization behavior for aggregation. Individual state estimates of changes in efficiency, technology, and productivity from 1987 to 1992 were computed, divided by 1987 values. Over these states the average increase in productivity was 3.6 percent, or about 0.7 percent per year. Almost all of the productivity increase occurred from technological change, since the average increase in efficiency was only 0.1 percent. Technological change averaged 3.5 percent over the five year period, or about 0.7 percent each year. If there is a significant decrease in the number of farms in a state, it might be expected that the remaining farms are more efficient, under the assumption that the least efficient farms are those that exit the industry. This was tested by regressing the percent change in efficiency on the percent change in farm numbers. The results were statistically insignificant. Likewise, if the output of the average farm increased it might be expected that efficiency might fall. This was tested by regressing the percent change in efficiency on the percent change in output per farm. Again the results were statistically insignificant. It was further expected that states that increased output per farm might have done so by using new technology. This was tested by regressing percent technological change on the percent change in output per farm. These results were also statistically insignificant.

Keywords: Livestock Production/Industries; Productivity Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17
Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/21670/files/sp99ta01.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Productivity of Dairy Production in Individual States (1999)
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:aaea99:21670

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.21670

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 1999 Annual meeting, August 8-11, Nashville, TN from American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().