Browsing by Author "Kebede, Wengelawit"

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    Technical Efficiency of Smallholder Farmers in Ethiopia: Evidence from Selected Regions
    (2009-06) Kebede, Wengelawit; I-Iamda, Hussien (Dr)
    This study estimates technical efficiency and identifies inefficiency facial's of smallholder farmers in four selected areas in Ethiopia using Ethiopian rural household survey date of 2004. The study classified farmers by their region and selected four villages to estimate their technical efficiency levels. The paper employed stochastic frontier production function to estimate parameters of the frontier function and the inefficiency scores simultaneously using Maximum Likelihood estimation. The empirical results indicate that technical inefficiency characterizing cereal production using transom production. function bitter fits the data from all villages used in this study. Empirical evidence show that the mean technical efficiency ranged from 0.53 to 0,74. An examination of the relationship between technical efficiency and various socioeconomic and institutional variables revealed that formal education, access to credit. number of livestock owned. off-farm income. age and sex of household head and family size were found 10 be important factors explaining technical efficiency of cereal production in the study villages. However, the importance of these variables in explaining technical efficiency differs across villages. The results suggested that any attempt 10 improve technical efficiency of farmers should give due attention to these factors and the difference among villages in terms of ecology and institutional factors need to be considered both in an effort 10 improve efficiency of utilizing the available resources and developing improved technologies in the long run. Key words: Technical efficiency. stochastic frontier' transom production function. Ethiopia JEL Classification: C2 1, C24, Q 12, Q 14..