The Impact of Rural Financial Services on the Technical Efficiency of Rice Farmers in the Upper North of Thailand

Yaovarate Chaovanapoonphol, George E. Battese and Chang, Hui-Shung (Christie)

No 137811, 2005 Conference (49th), February 9-11, 2005, Coff's Harbour, Australia from Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society

Abstract: After the financial crisis in 1997, the Thai government established and promoted financial services to rural areas to improve the quality of life of rural households and increase the productivity and technical efficiency of farmers. This paper seeks to investigate the impact of financial services on the technical efficiency of rice farmers. Stochastic frontier production functions are estimated using the survey data collected from 656 rice farmers in 2004. The average technical efficiencies of rice farmers were 79 per cent. Factors affecting the technical inefficiencies of rice farmers were land, amount of loans used for major rice production, experience, formal education and age. Hence, government policy that would improve the level of education of farmers and support rural financial services to farmers would lead to a significant increase in the level of technical efficiency of major rice production.

Keywords: Farm Management; Financial Economics; International Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/137811/files/2005_chaovanapoonphol.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:aare05:137811

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.137811

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2005 Conference (49th), February 9-11, 2005, Coff's Harbour, Australia from Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().