Access to credit, plot size and cost inefficiency among smallholder tobacco cultivators in Malawi
利用马拉维家庭调查数据，研究正规信贷获取和烟草地块规模如何影响小农户的成本低效率，发现大地块成本效率更高，但信贷本身无显著作用，反而削弱了地块规模带来的效率提升。
Using data from the Malawi Financial Markets and Household Food Security Survey, this paper examines the effect of access to credit from formal sources, and tobacco plot size, on cost inefficiency among Malawian smallholder tobacco cultivators.Farm-specific cost inefficiency is estimated within the framework of stochastic frontier analysis.Access to credit is measured as the sum of household members' self-reported credit limits at credit organisations, arguably a truer measure of an exogenous credit constraint than credit program participation or actual loan uptake.It is found that tobacco cultivation is significantly less cost inefficient per acre on larger plots.While access to credit by itself has no statistically discernible effect on cost inefficiency, it reduces the gain in cost efficiency from a larger plot size.