IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/caerpp/caer-11-2016-0179.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does household engagement in concurrent business affect the farm size-technical efficiency relationship in grain production?

Author

Listed:
  • Min Zhong
  • Yuchun Zhu
  • Qihui Chen
  • Tianjun Liu
  • Qihua Cai

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine how households’ engagement in concurrent business (CB), which is measured by the contribution of off-farm income to household income, affects the farm size–technical efficiency (TE) relationship in Northern China. Design/methodology/approach - This paper applies a stochastic frontier analysis method to analyze data on 1,006 rural households collected from four major wheat-producing provinces in Northern China, adopting a translog specification for the underlying production function. Findings - The analysis yields three findings. First, the farm size–TE relationship is inverted U-shaped for all CB engagement levels higher than 5 percent, and the most technically efficient farm size increases with the level of household CB engagement. Second, how TE varies with the level of CB engagement depends on farm size: an inverted-U relationship for relatively small farms ( 20μ). Finally, the overall TE score, 0.88, suggests that wheat output can be increased by 12 percent in Northern China if technical inefficiency were eliminated. Originality/value - Unlike most previous studies that examine the impacts of farm size and households’ off-farm business involvement separately, this paper examines how these two factors interact with each other.

Suggested Citation

  • Min Zhong & Yuchun Zhu & Qihui Chen & Tianjun Liu & Qihua Cai, 2018. "Does household engagement in concurrent business affect the farm size-technical efficiency relationship in grain production?," China Agricultural Economic Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 11(1), pages 125-142, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:caerpp:caer-11-2016-0179
    DOI: 10.1108/CAER-11-2016-0179
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/CAER-11-2016-0179/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/CAER-11-2016-0179/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/CAER-11-2016-0179?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ngango, Jules & Hong, Seungjee, 2021. "Impacts of land tenure security on yield and technical efficiency of maize farmers in Rwanda," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    2. Fang Song & Xuerong Xu, 2023. "How Operation Scale Improve the Production Technical Efficiency of Grape Growers? An Empirical Evidence of Novel Panel Methods for China’s Survey Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-19, February.
    3. Ngango, Jules & Seungjee, Hong, 2021. "Examining the Relationship between Farm Size and Technical Efficiency in Rwandan Maize Production," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 314937, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Zhu, Xiaoke & Hu, Ruifa & Zhang, Chao & Shi, Guanming, 2021. "Does Internet use improve technical efficiency? Evidence from apple production in China," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Technical efficiency; Rural China; Concurrent business; Farm size; Stochastic production frontier; J21; Q15;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:caerpp:caer-11-2016-0179. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.