How to define and study farmers' management capacity: theory and use in agricultural economics
梳理了农民管理能力的定义，将其分为个人特质和决策过程两方面，并评述了相关实证研究，指出前沿生产函数虽常用但解释效率差异时多忽略决策过程，建议未来纳入该因素并采用纵向实地观察。
Abstract Textbooks and articles on farm management stress the importance of the management capacity of the farmer with respect to his farm results. However, explicit definitions together with an elaboration of this concept are hard to find. In this article, aspects of management capacity are grouped into: (1) personal aspects, consisting of fanner's drives and motivations, fanner's abilities and capabilities and his biographical facts such as age and education; and (2) aspects of the decision‐making process, consisting of practices and procedures with respect to planning, implementation and control of decisions at the farm. Empirical studies on the role of management capacity in relation to farm results are reviewed. Frontier production functions are widely used in recent literature to estimate technical and economic efficiency of farms. However, in explaining differences in efficiency most studies do not go further than adding a biographical variabk (e.g., level of education). This study concludes that a next step would be to include aspects of the decision‐making process. Longitudinal on‐farm observations, which give possibilities for studying the dynamic aspects of the decision‐making, are suggested to further analyze the concept of management capacity.