Are Small Farms Really more Productive than Large Farms?

Fernando Aragon, Diego Restuccia and Juan Pablo Rud

No 26331, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper shows that using yields may not be informative of the relationship between farm size and productivity in the context of small-scale farming. This occurs because, in addition to productivity, yields pick up size-dependent market distortions and decreasing returns to scale. As a result, a positive relationship between farm productivity and land size may turn negative when using yields. We illustrate the empirical relevance of this issue with microdata from Uganda and show similar findings for Peru, Tanzania, and Bangladesh. In addition, we show that the dispersion in both measures of productivity across farms of similar size is so large that it renders farm size an ineffective indicator for policy targeting. Our findings stress the need to revisit the empirical evidence on the farm size-productivity relationship and its policy implications.

JEL-codes: C33 C55 D24 E02 E13 O11 O12 O13 O4 O5 Q15 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-mac and nep-sbm
Note: DEV EFG PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published as Aragón, Fernando M. & Restuccia, Diego & Rud, Juan Pablo, 2022. "Are small farms really more productive than large farms?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26331.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Are small farms really more productive than large farms? (2022)
Working Paper: Are small farms really more productive than large farms? (2021)
Working Paper: Are small farms really more productive than large farms? (2021)
Working Paper: Are small farms really more productive than large farms? (2021)
Working Paper: Are small farms really more productive than large farms? (2021)
Working Paper: Are small farms really more productive than large farms? (2020)
Working Paper: Are Small Farms Really more Productive than Large Farms? (2019)
Working Paper: Are small farms really more productive than large farms? (2019)
Working Paper: Are Small Farms Really more Productive than Large Farms? (2019)
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:nbr:nberwo:26331

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26331

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().