Technical efficiency of the agricultural sector in Mexico: An overview of data envelopment analysis

The aim of this paper is to understand the agricultural sector in Mexico by looking at the way productive factors are being used and its technical efficiency. By means of data envelopment analysis, the empirical evidence shows that the northern states of the country are leaders in the sector, the north-central states determine the efficient production frontier and only eight of them operate efficiently under variable returns to scale, while 24 operate in the segment decreasing returns to scale. The overall efficiency of the states is 0.49, so there is the possibility of increasing output by 51% by making a better use of capital and labor.