Efficiency, technological change and output growth in Greek olive growing farms: a Box-Cox approach

This paper captures the relative contributions of input growth, technologic al change and technical efficiency to olive oil production growth for a pan el data set of 125 Greek olive-growing farms for the period 1987 to 1993. A flexible generalized quadratic Box-Cox functional form is proposed to repr esent the underlying production technology. This functional specification c opes with the problem of zero inputs and nests all widely used production f rontiers. Empirical results show that the observed production growth is mai nly due to increased input use since it was not accompanied by rapid introd uction of technological innovations and improvements in efficiency levels.