Explaining changes in productivity involves explaining changes in output and input quantities. Several economic models can be used for this purpose. This paper considers a model that accounts for weather and output price uncertainty. Changes in productivity are then explained in two steps....

Allocations of research funds across programs are often made for efficiency reasons. Social science research is shown to have small, lagged but significant effects on U.S. agricultural efficiency when public agricultural R&D and extension are simultaneously taken into account. Farm management...

The estimated parameters of output distance functions frequently violate the monotonicity, quasi-convexity and convexity constraints implied by economic theory, leading to estimated elasticities and shadow prices that are incorrectly signed, and ultimately to perverse conclusions concerning the...

Recent empirical studies have found significant evidence of departures from competition in the input side of the bread,breakfast cereal and margarine end-product markets. In this study we specify a general duality model of profitmaximisation that allows for imperfect competition in the input and...

Profitability change can be decomposed into the product of a total factor productivity (TFP) index and an index measuring changes in relative prices. Many TFP indexes can be further decomposed into measures of technical change, technical efficiency change, scale efficiency change and mix...

This paper presents a metafrontier production function model for firms in different groups having different technologies. The metafrontier model enables the calculation of comparable technical efficiencies for firms operating under different technologies. The model also enables the technology...

Wool tenderness is a significant problem in Australia, especially in areas where sheep graze under highly seasonal conditions. In this study, a duality-based modeling framework is implemented to assess the economic impact of staple strength-enhancing research on the profits of Australian...

Systems of equations comprising cost functions and first-order derivative equations are often used to estimate characteristics of production technologies. Unfortunately, many estimated systems violate the regularity conditions implied by economic theory. Sampling theory methods can be used to...

Polluting technologies can be represented using output distance functions. A common approach to estimating such functions is to factor out one of the outputs and estimate the resulting equation using well-known stochastic frontier estimation methods, including maximum likelihood. A problem with...