Farm technology and technical efficiency: Evidence from four regions in China

In this paper we fit stochastic frontier production functions to data of Chinese farms grouped into each of four regions--North, Northeast, East, and Southwest--over 1995-1999. These frontier production functions are shown to have statistically different structures, and the elasticities provide some evidence of diminished marginal products of chemical inputs in the East and capital services in the North and Southwest. Labor has a low elasticity except in the North. Standardized technical efficiency scores are estimated for the farms and are shown to have the same structure across regions and to be related to the age of the household head, land fragmentation, and the village migration ratio, controlling for year effects and village or regional fixed effects.