Replaced with revised version of poster 07/21/10.

This paper examines the role of institutional environments on cotton farmer technical efficiency scores in Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali using a stochastic frontier production approach. First, the key institutional changes that have occurred with the recent market-oriented reforms are discussed....

The paper measures the U.S. Farm Credit System’s technical efficiency from 2000 to 2009 using a stochastic frontier production function model with quarterly unbalanced panel data. The paper's results suggest that the FCS has not efficiently utilized their inputs. On an average, the system...

The analysis of technical efficiency (TE) on the small-scale fishery is relevant for several reasons. While this type of fishery is highly common in developing countries like Mexico, there are a very limited number of analyses assessing their efficiency. Indeed, there is no precise information...

Replaced with revised version of paper 09/23/11.

The measurement of productivity fluctuations has been the focus of decades-long interest. In addition to broad structural forces driving productivity changes, there is more recent interest in measuring and identifying the heterogeneous forces driving these changes. A major force is...

In order to cope with the water scarcity, Tunisia has to manage efficiently the demand of the economic and social sectors mainly that of the agricultural irrigated activities. Within this context, this investigation aims to analyze the technical efficiency, the water use efficiency and the...

Early microeconomic theory established its framework under the assumption that producers’ behaviour is optimal towards input allocation and output level. Since Debreu and Farrell this basic neoclassical approach has been extended, allowing for producers’ decisions to diverge from the optimum...

Consider a stochastic frontier model with one-sided inefficiency u, and suppose that the scale of u depends on some variables (firm characteristics) z. A one-step model specifies both the stochastic frontier and the way in which u depends on z, and can be estimated in a single step, for example...

Productivity and efficiency analyses have been indispensable tools for evaluating firms’ performance in the banking sector. In this context, the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) has been recently proposed in order to obtain a globally flexible functional form which is capable of...