Improving farm productivity is often touted as essential for the future prospects of Australian agriculture, particularly for the export-oriented broadacre farm sector. This paper draws on farm panel data for the period 2002 to 2011. The annual components of productivity of the same group of 223...

Using panel data, we estimate technology gaps for four distinct sheep-producing regions in Eastern Australia (Northern New South Wales, Central and South-Eastern New South Wales, South-Western New South Wales and South-West Victoria) that reflect spatial environmental and technological...

Conventional wisdom holds that rainfall variability represents a significant source of agriculture production risk. Surprisingly, there have been very few economic analyses exploring the link between rainfall variability and agriculture production. This paper is intended to investigate the...

In this paper we analyse the technical efficiency of cotton farmers in the Punjab Province in Pakistan. Technical efficiency is measured relative to a stochastic frontier production function (SFPF). The estimated model includes a function in which technical efficiency is made an explicit...

Variety change and genetic diversity are important means of combating crop losses from pests and diseases in modern agricultural systems. Since the Green Revolution, genetic diversity among wheat varieties released in India has increased but variety change on farms continues to be slow. In this...

This paper updates the results of an earlier paper (Johnson 1996) exploring productivity trends 1972-92 prepared for the OECD. Tornqvist indexes are used to compensate for changes in the mix of outputs and inputs. Capital is charged at service prices. Present indications are that labour and...

This paper develops a theoretical model to examine the relationship between the input elasticity of (technical) substitution and both farm total factor productivity and size. In the presence of ongoing technical change and its factor bias, the ‘income effect’ arising from farms’ cost...