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Using a Probabilistic Frontier Production Function to Measure Technical Efficiency
Abstract
This article uses linear programming techniques to "estimate" a frontier Cobb-Douglas production function for U.S. agriculture from 1960 to 1967, using the "average farm" in each state in each year as an observation. Both deterministic and probabilistic frontiers are generated and the results compared with ordinary least-squares and analysis of covariance estimates of the production function. Technical inefficiency is defined relative to the probabilistic frontier function and the extent of any inefficiency calculated for each state. Little technical inefficiency exists across states when the production function includes intermediate inputs as well as land, labor, and capital.
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Citations
Cited by
Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models
Aigner, D., Lovell, C. A. K., & Schmidt, P. (1977) · Journal of Econometrics · doi:10.1016/0304-4076(77)90052-5 · Cited by 10,135
Efficiency Estimation from Cobb-Douglas Production Functions with Composed Error
Meeusen, W., & van Den Broeck, J. (1977) · International Economic Review · doi:10.2307/2525757 · Cited by 6,247
Battese, G. E., & Coelli, T. J. (1992) · Journal of Productivity Analysis · doi:10.1007/bf00158774 · Cited by 2,832
Maximum likelihood estimation of econometric frontier functions
Greene, W. H. (1980) · Journal of Econometrics · doi:10.1016/0304-4076(80)90041-x · Cited by 704
Battese, G. (1992) · Agricultural Economics · doi:10.1016/0169-5150(92)90049-5 · Cited by 670
Metadata
- Authors
- Timmer, C. P.
- Venue
- Journal of Political Economy
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1971-07
- Volume
- 79
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 776-794
- ISSN
- 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-534X
- OpenAlex
- W2010122323
- Cited by
- 507
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 5.16
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Timmer, C. P. (1971). Using a Probabilistic Frontier Production Function to Measure Technical Efficiency. Journal of Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1086/259787
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
