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Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Jason S. Bergtold / Benjamin B. Schwab / Agricultural development is an essential factor in the economic development of much of the developing world and comprises a significant element of foreign assistance portfolios. Over the last decade, there has seen a renewed interest in more credible estimates of the economic impacts of development programs, such as assistance to extension programs. We compare the estimation of technical efficiency to farm output and income as an outcome variable to evaluate the impact of development programs such as farm education and extension programs. We develop a simple theoretical model which shows that using technical efficiency as an outcome variable could be a viable alternative to more traditionally used outcome variables such as farm output and farm profit. We note that when farmers are capital constrained, extension programs can theoretically have a large efficiency effect despite a small or zero change in farm profits. If farm technical efficiency is used as an outcome variable, then it must be estimated correctly. Mismeasurement of farm technical efficiency leads to misleading extension program evaluations. Farm households face heterogeneous infrastructural constraints (Suri 2011; Ojiem et al. 2006), credit constraints, information barriers and other input market constraints (Duflo, Kremer and Robinson 2011; Jack 201; Suri 2011and Stifel and Minten 2008), labor markets constraints (Henning and Henningsen 2007), socio-economical (Ojiem et al. 2006) and non-farm income opportunities (Chang et al. 2012) and thus have different access to agricultural inputs and outputs. These constraints have a substantial impact on agricultural production decisions of farm households. A key production decision of farm households is the allocation of resource to cash and food crops. Production of cash crops requires relatively higher market involvement in both the purchase of inputs and the selling of output than home-consumed food crops. The heterogeneous constraints across farm households leads to a substantial imbalance in the transaction costs associated with the production of each crop. Moreover, home-consumed crops may have quality attributes (e.g. color, taste, softness of dough, and suitability for certain dishes) not reflected in market prices. Factors such as transaction costs, crop quality attributes, and other factors such as household characteristics are farmer specific and drive a heterogeneous price wedge between the market prices for household’s crop production and the economic value of these crops for the household. These distinctions have important implication for farm productivity analysis, such as technical efficiency measurement. The standard approach to productivity analysis, such as efficiency estimation, assume that farm households face homogenous price wedges that leads to homogenous set of production and profit functions. However, the price gap created by transaction costs, crop quality attributes, and other factors such as household characteristics generally vary among subsistence, semi-subsistence and commercial farmers and leads to a heterogeneous set of profit and production frontiers. Subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers who produce largely home consumed crops have potentially greater price wedges than commercial farmers. Failing to account for the heterogeneity in price wedges that drive heterogeneity profit and production frontiers is likely to lead to underestimation of the efficiency of subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers. We test if traditional productivity analysis indeed underestimates the efficiency of subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers by employing a conditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model for household survey data in Uganda. Results confirm that naïve estimates of efficiency understate the efficiency scores of subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers. The results cast doubt on policies, such as extension programs or other information treatments, that interpret low efficiency scores for subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers as a management shortfall. We demonstrate the use of farm technical efficiency as an outcome measure by analyzing data from 2008-2012 for farm training program in Armenia. In this program, farmers received technical guidance on modern farm techniques. Two previous evaluations (Schwab and Shanoyan 2016; Fortson et al. 2012) find ambiguous evidence that farm profits increased. The measurement or potential gain from an extension program is captured using farm technical efficiency measures. We find evidence that the program in Armenia increased farm technical efficiency from 2008 to 2012.

The focus of following thesis is to evaluate selected aspects of animal hygine of livestock husbandry in term of welfare in foothills area. The study covers two private-owned farms in the same area, however with entirely different attitude to stock husbandry. Welfare itself is not easy to quantify and to mesure, but we can pass judgment on the over-all comfort of stock using folowing indicators: health condition, reproductive potential, production efficiency etc.. All above memtioned indicators consist of many aspects. The most important are, alimentation, diet, technology of stockmanship and stress. This thesis involves comparsion of animal welfare and its economical utilization and if the condionts of stock husbandry provided by farmers response welfare standarts . To summe up, the technology of free housing respect more the ethological demand of stock.

This dissertation is compiled of three chapters in determining the effect of bilateral foreign assistance on the economy of Pakistan. The effect of foreign assistance will be measured in terms of public expenditure and revenue. The factors associated in the provision of aid commitments and disbursements, and the effect of bilateral assistance on the production efficiency of Pakistan. Chapter 1 uses an aid disaggregation approach to examine the impact of different types of bilateral donors on the fiscal sector of Pakistan, an important aid recipient in recent years. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of bilateral aid on the economy of Pakistan, from the four largest donors, which include the USA, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Time series data for the period 1972-2010 were analyzed along with an estimation of a fiscal response model following Mavrotas (2005) that combines both aid disaggregation in terms of types of aid and the treatment of endogeneity. The empirical estimation of the structural equations and reduced form equations, using nonlinear three stage least squares estimation clearly suggests the importance of the above approach for delving deeper into aid effectiveness issues. Since different bilateral donors have different effects on key fiscal variables, an impact could not be revealed if a single figure for aid were employed. While aid from Japan increases public investment, aid from the USA, the UK, and Germany appears to cause a reduction in public investment. Similarly, aid from Japan reduces public consumption, but the aid from other donors causes an increase in public consumption. In regards to tax revenue, the aid flows from the USA, the UK and Germany leads to a reduction in tax revenue, but aid flow from Japan increases tax revenue. Chapter 2 investigates the relation between aid disbursements and aid commitments from the fourteen largest donors to Pakistan, and determine the factor that effects commitments and the disbursements. The time series data was employed for the period 1972-2010. The estimation of the model through fixed effect approach and two stage least squares approach showed that aid disbursements, aid commitment from donors to African countries, and Pakistan's membership at the United Nations Security Council effects aid commitments positively and significantly. But, the inverse relation existed between GDP per capita of Pakistan and aid commitments. Similarly, aid commitments relation with the aid disbursements was positive and significant. The war in Afghanistan during any time between1972-2010 increases the aid disbursement to Pakistan. It was also determined that if the level of primary education increases, the aid disbursement to Pakistan decreases. The results also showed that when Pakistan is ruled by the military government the aid disbursements to Pakistan reduces. Chapter 3 focus is to see the impact of different bilateral donors on the production inefficiency of the Pakistan. To empirically estimate the effect of bilateral aid heterogeneity on production inefficiency, we use the time series data for Pakistan for the period 1972-2010. The stochastic frontier analysis was conducted using maximum likelihood estimation. The results determined that the aid from the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany tends to increase production efficiency of Pakistan. However on the contrary aid from Japan tends to decrease production efficiency. It was also concluded from the results that foreign direct investment and public investment also increases production efficiency. But, the relation between human capital and production efficiency was negative. Also, the results indicated that when Pakistan is ruled by the military government the aid flows from the USA and UK reduces production efficiency.

For companies operating within the garment manufacturing industry, having frequent downtimes in their production flows is an extremely common issue. In this context, a balanced production line is required to prevent high waiting times due to limited productive capacity. A well-balanced assembly line allows products to be produced in an optimum time while using less resources, such as machines, materials, or labour, since the right number of products is produced with the exact amount of resources, thus generating savings in production costs. This paper seeks to foster optimum resource allocation through the line balancing tool. Finally, to define a work methodology, best practices were selected, and a procedures manual was developed focusing on Standardization. Both tools were implemented after implementing changes to the company culture by means of the Employee Empowerment tool. As a result of this implementation, workers acquired greater accountability and control over the resources, methods, and equipment of their work areas. After the proposed improvements had been deployed, the company reported an increase of over 20% in production line quality, performance, and efficiency.

Thesis (M.Sc. Agric.) --University of Limpopo, 2011 / Maize is the most important cereal crop grown in South Africa. This crop is produced throughout the country under diverse environments. The study only focuses on the technical efficiency because it is an important subject in developing agriculture where resources are limited, but high population growth is very common. Technical efficiency is the ability of a farmer to obtain output from a given set of physical inputs. Farmers have a tendency of under and/or over- utilising the factors of production. The main aim of this study was to analyse the technical efficiency of small-scale maize producers in Ga-Mothiba rural community of Limpopo Province. The objective of the study was to determine the level of technical efficiency of small- scale maize producers and to identify the socio-economic characteristics that influence technical efficiency of small-scale maize producers in Ga-Mothiba. Purposive and Snowball sampling techniques were used to collect primary data from 120 small-scale farmers. Cobb-Douglas production function was used to determine the level of technical efficiency and Logistic regression model was used to analyse the variables that have influence the technical efficiency of maize production. Cobb-Douglas results reveal that small-scale farmers in Ga-Mothiba are experiencing technical inefficiency in maize production due to the decreasing return to scale, which means they are over-utilising factors of production. Logistic regression results indicate that out of 13 variables included in the analysis as socio-economic factors, 10 of them (level of education, income of the household on monthly basis, farmer`s farming experience, farm size, cost of tractor hours, fertiliser application, purchased hybrid maize seeds, membership to farmers` organisation, is maize profitable) were found to be significant and 3 (gender, age and hired labour) are non-significant. However, farm size was found to be the most significant variable at 99% level, showing a positive relationship to small- scale maize producer`s technical efficiency. Therefore, it is recommended that government should do the on-farm training since farmers mainly depend on trial and error and farmers` should have access to enough arable land and tractor services. However, farmers need to be trained on matters relating to fertiliser application, on the amount of seeds a farmer should apply per ha, and the importance of using hybrid seed.

Stochastic frontier analysis is an exciting method of economic production modeling that is relevant to hospitals, stock markets, manufacturing factories, and services. In this paper, we create a new model using the normal distribution and truncated skew-Laplace distribution, namely the normal-truncated skew-Laplace model. This is a generalized model of the normal-exponential case. Furthermore, we compute the true technical efficiency and estimated technical efficiency of the normal-truncated skewed-Laplace model. Also, we compare the technical efficiencies of normal-truncated skewed-Laplace model and normal-exponential model.

From the idea of efficiency raised by Koopmans in 1951, and the panel data first introduced into the efficiency analysis by Pitt and Lee (1981) and Schmidt and Sickles (1984), the techniques of stochastic frontier analysis are fast developed and the applications of stochastic frontier are widely used in different areas, such as education, industry and hospital. But most researchers focus on only one aspect, either the development of new models or empirical applications. This thesis attempts to fill the gap to get a general idea of the properties of different panel data stochastic frontier models, on both statistical aspects and economic aspects, by the comparison of different models applied to different production applications. The thesis is also attempt to shed light on whether particular panel data stochastic frontier models are better suited to different data sets. The models selected capture the simplest situation, with no heterogeneity or heteroscedasticity, and complicated ones, with exogenous variables included in the models. Not only the classical models, such as the Pitt and Lee (1981) and Battese and Coelli (1992.1995), but also the new developed models, such as the latent class model and fixed management model are detected in the thesis. On the economic aspect, the data selected captures both microeconomic and macroeconomic, with the application to the World GDP and the Italian manufacturing industry. The results show that: the panel data stochastic frontier models perform better on the microeconomic level than on the macroeconomic level; the classical models perform better than the new developed ones; some panel data stochastic frontier models make ideal assumptions but the requirements to the dataset are hard to achieve; that the influence from the exogenous variables is quite strong.