ISSUES IN MEASURING THE EFFICIENCIES OF AGRICULTURAL BANKS - DISCUSSION

The papers by Ellinger; Featherstone and Moss (F-M); and Neff and Dixo n (N-D) provide an excellent primer on the topic of ''Commercial Bank Efficiency in Financing Agriculture.'' The estimation with curvature c onstraints, the Fuss functional form, and the comparison of cost and p rofit function efficiencies are also quite impressive and interesting technical efforts. The goal of this short note is to offer some constr uctive criticism. While it is too late to incorporate these suggestion s into the current papers, the authors and perhaps others may find the se remarks useful in future research. In my opinion, more can and shou ld be done to answer the important questions raised in this literature .