MEASURING TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY FROM PRODUCTION FUNCTIONS: SOME FURTHER ESTIMATES
对英国西北部农场1974/5至1977/8四年间的技术效率进行估计，使用计量经济学和线性规划方法得到三种测量，发现它们之间相关性低，质疑了基于横截面数据测量效率的可靠性。
The concept of economic and technical efficiency is fundamental to agricultural policy‐making, and Russell and Young (1983) in this Journal provide a recent addition to the literature for British agriculture. They estimate technical efficiency for a cross‐section of farms in the North‐West of England for the year 1977/8. However, such measures for a single year may be influenced by particular events in that year. This paper considers some further estimates of farm efficiency but for the longer, four‐year period 1974/5 to 1977/8. Three measures of technical efficiency are estimated, two using econometric techniques and one using linear programming methods. It is found that there are low correlations between these different measures of technical efficiency both over time and at one point in time. This casts doubt on the usefulness of measuring efficiency using cross‐section (single period) survey data.