In this paper a multiple-output cost function framework is proposed to construct national feed balances or feed utilisation matrices (FUMs). The framework is applied to the Belgian compound feed industry. For estimation purposes a Symmetric Generalised McFadden (SGM) cost function is selected....

The efficiency of women fanners in the agricultural sector of developing countries is passionately debated. Very few studies have examined this issue in African agriculture. All previous studies were based on production functions, but have been criticised as suffering from simultaneous equation...

Reduced-form price spread models have been recently utilized by Wohlgenant and Mullen, and Thompson and Lyon to evaluate the economic factors affecting the marketing margins for agricultural products. Drawing on Gardner, Heien, Buse and Brandow, Waugh, Tomek and Robinson, and others they specify...

Neoclassical economic theory provides an important conceptual framework for the analysis of agricultural production. Theory provides little guidance, however, in the actual specification of empirical models. This paper applies an integrated approach for choosing between price expectation...

The objective of this paper is to test the hypothesis that farmer perceptions of technology- specific characteristics significantly condition technology adoption decisions. Earlier adoption studies have not considered this in the analysis of the determinants of adoption decisions. The omission...

Rapid institutional innovation in the 1980's has led to problems that exceed the scope of research normally assumed by individual researchers. During such periods of rapid change, subject-matter research may be particularly useful. This paper reviews research on the Federal Agricultural Mortgage...

The paper develops and illustrates the application of criteria for ranking risky investment alternatives that are based on their certainly equivalent (cE) outcomes and determines expressions for approximating the cE outcomes by means of the central moments of their distribution. The paper...

Conventional estimates of the economic return to agricultural research use market prices for the values of products and inputs; on this basis, economic rates of return are typically well above the cost of capital, suggesting that more investment in research would be socially desirable. But these...

A shadow-price profit frontier model is developed to examine production efficiency of Chinese rural households in farming operations. The model incorporates price distortions resulting from imperfect market conditions and socioeconomic and institutional constraints, but retains the advantages of...