Agricultural productivity measurement has been of great interest in recent years. Although analysts have long recognized that land quality plays an important role in agricultural productivity, land quality has been difficult to quantify and include in productivity models due to d ata...

This study analyzed relationship between techn ical efficiency and socio-economic variables of cassava farmers in Nigeria. Data were collected from randomly sampled 360 cassava farmers in Nigeria using a structured questionnaire. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics comprising...

Using a stochastic production frontier model and data for 2002 from a representative sample of Mexican rural households, in this paper we first study empirically whether or not small and medium farmers produce corn efficiently. The results show that corn production is inefficient, nation-wide...

This paper studies the regional disparity of China's agricultural productivity growth by decomposing it into technical changes, efficiency changes and input accumulation per worker. The convergence test is also used to analyze the determinants of regional disparity. The paper finds that during...

A study on farm level capital formation in two contrasting scenarios of agricultural development revealed that by and large capital formation was more on large and irrigated farms. The aggregate capital formation was higher in the progressive area than in less progressive area. The priority of...

This paper presents a politico-economic analysis of decision making about the US sugar programme. It analyz.es the linkages between the economic surpluses of market participants and the policy response via the level of target prices and import quotas. The legislative decisions of the sugar...

The purpose of this paper is to measure the technical efficiency of farms on the basis of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and to present an analytical method of farm diagnosis using measurements obtained for melon farms in Japan. The paper first describes the objectives of melon farms operating...

Whereas the treatment of space in economic analysis leaves much to be desired, the economic policy issues raised by the existence of spatial disparities are prominent in many debates, as illustrated for instance at the international level by the debate around the need for a new international...

Although the successes achieved by the adoption of new seed and fertilizer technology were impressive, especially in regions endowed with public sources of irrigation, it is often feared--on the basis of field observations and evaluation studies--that it has led to a widening of interfarm and...

The measurement of agricultural productivity is important in understanding growth in agriculture and in assessing competitiveness. In this paper, some difficulties related to the empirical measurement of productivity are analyzed using a Canadian case study. The paper focuses in particular on...