This article applies frontier production function analysis to small farms in Nicaragua during 1998-2005 (Battese and Coelli, 1988). The objective of this study is to estimate an average function that will provide a picture of the shape of the organic fertilizer technology of an average firm (in...

Published by Asociación de Economistas Agrarios de Chile

Limited budget for the purchase of variable inputs might adversely affect producer's input use decisions and might result in a non-optimal input usage. If expenditure constrains are present and binding, unconstrained profit-maximization is not valid for modelling producers' input use decisions....

In the estimation of production functions, ignoring risk considerations can cause inefficient estimates, while biased parameter estimates arise in the presence of sample selection. In the presence of uncertainty and selection bias, the latter introduced by the endogeneity of qualitative...

The relationship among rice yield and weather variables in Korea is explored using a stochastic production function. The results reveal that average rice yield is positively related to temperature and negatively associated with precipitation. Both temperature and precipitation, which are...

Modern methods of quantitative risk analysis, specifically value-at-risk and expected shortfall approach, provide comprehensive and coherent risk evaluation throughout entire distribution of outcomes and can take agricultural business from the realm of uncertainty to specific, quantified risks....

Cattle feeding enterprises operate amid variability originating in prices and production. This research explicitly models yield risks related to cattle feeding by relating the mean and variance of yield performance factors to observable conditioning variables. The results demonstrate that pen...

By using a stochastic frontier framework, the mutual effect of input use on production risk and inefficiency is investigated. Disentangling this mutual effect proves important for empirical reasons, at least when applied to west Tennessee cotton systems grown after various cover crops. The most...

The paper investigates the linkages between technological change and production risk, with an application to corn. The effects of technology on risk exposure are analyzed. We define technological progress to be risk-increasing (risk-decreasing) if it increases (decreases) the relative risk...

Do transgenic crops cause agrobiodiversity erosion? We hypothesize that they increase productivity and reduce production risk and may therefore reduce farmer demand for on-farm varietal diversity, especially when only a few transgenic varieties are available. We also hypothesize that varietal...