FACTORS AFFECTING TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY SCORES ESTIMATED FOR THE COTTON SECTOR OF THE HARRAN PLAIN IN TURKIYE: A STOCHASTIC FRONTIER ANALYSIS

Abstract

The current study deals with the technical efficiency of cotton farmers operating on the Harran Plain of Turkiye with an application to the two well-known stochastic approaches, i.e., the Cobb-Douglas and the translog stochastic frontier production functions. Using farm-level cross-sectional data, a specialized maximum likelihood technique incorporates both stochastic frontiers and inefficiency effects models into a single equation model to estimate these efficiency scores along with their determinants simultaneously. Calculations indicate that technical inefficiency effects were present in these models. The data used in this research proved to be the best fit for the translog production function in comparison to the specification of the corresponding Cobb-Douglas frontier model. Although partial influences of some of the variables included in the inefficiency effects model were found to be insignificant, all these variables jointly had significant impacts in shaping the inefficiency of the sampled farmers. Results show that factors such as farm experience, education, land fragmentation, off-farm job availability, irrigation frequency, and farm location influence the technical inefficiency effects. © 2023 by authors and Galileo Institute of Technology and Education of the Amazon (ITEGAM).