This study investigates the impact of risk preferences on economic efficiency scores. Risk averse individuals may be less likely to adopt new technologies and have lower production levels than individuals with other risk preferences. Nonparametric techniques are used to estimate cost and revenue...

We use nonparametric production function methods to decompose farm-level labor productivity growth into components attributable to efficiency change, technical change, and factor intensity. The estimation is accomplished using balanced panel data drawn from the Kansas Farm Management Association...

This article investigates the sources of profitability and productivity change at the farm level with an application to a group of 252 farms in Kansas over an 18 years period, from 1993 to 2010. The Lowe index method is used to compute changes in total factor productivity (TFP) and terms of...

This paper examines the efficiency of a sample of Great Plains grain marketing and farm supply cooperatives during 1988 to 1992. In general, larger cooperatives were more X-efficient and scale efficient. Labor tended to be under-utilized and capital over-utilized. Petroleum product sales and...

Competitive pressures in the cow-calf sector increased in 1995 because of a decline of 27% in calf prices. Technical, allocative, and scale efficiency measures were used to examine the competitiveness of a sample of Kansas beef cow farms. On average, the farms were 78% technically efficient, 81%...

The implications of treating environmental pollution as an undesirable output (weak disposability) as well as a normal input (strong disposability) on the direct and indirect shadow price and cost estimates of nitrogen pollution abatement is analyzed using Nebraska agriculture sector data. The...

The risk attitudes of dryland wheat and irrigated corn enterprises in Kansas have been examined in this paper using the nonlinear mean-standard deviation approach. Our results showed that dryland wheat enterprises are characterized by increasing absolute and increasing relative risk aversion....