TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY - A COMPARISON OF PRODUCTION FRONTIER METHODS

Recent differences in the measurement of farm efficiency may be relate d to the methods employed. Here, four alternative production frontiers are estimated using time-series, cross-section data for a sample of I llinois grain farms. Efficiency measures are found to be highly correl ated between nonparametric methods, and between parametric methods. Ho wever, large differences are noted when efficiency measures are compar ed between nonparametric and parametric methods. An analysis of farms with large differences, which are efficient under the nonparametric me thod, indicates that correlations between efficiency measures are much higher when these firms are excluded.