Too Small to Be Beautiful? : The Farm Size and Productivity Relationship in Bangladesh

This paper examines the agricultural productivity–farm size relationship in the context of Bangladesh. Features of Bangladesh's agriculture help overcome several limitations in testing the inverse farm size–productivity relationship in other d...

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Main Authors: Gautam, Madhur, Ahmed, Mansur
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/925511522248076351/Too-small-to-be-beautiful-the-farm-size-and-productivity-relationship-in-Bangladesh
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29567
id okr-10986-29567
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-295672021-06-08T14:42:45Z Too Small to Be Beautiful? : The Farm Size and Productivity Relationship in Bangladesh Gautam, Madhur Ahmed, Mansur RURAL LIVELIHOOD TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY FARM SIZE POVERTY AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY TECHNICAL CHANGE STOCHASTIC FRONTIER MODEL This paper examines the agricultural productivity–farm size relationship in the context of Bangladesh. Features of Bangladesh's agriculture help overcome several limitations in testing the inverse farm size–productivity relationship in other developing country settings. A stochastic production frontier model is applied using data from three rounds of a household panel survey to estimate simultaneously the production frontier and the technical inefficiency functions. The “correlated random effects” approach is used to control for unobserved heterogeneous household effects. Methodologically, the results suggest that the stochastic production frontier models that ignore the inefficiency function are likely mis-specified, and may result in misleading conclusions on the farm size–productivity relationship. Empirically, the findings confirm that the farm size and productivity relationship is negative, but with the inverse relationship diminishing over time. Total factor productivity growth, driven by technical change, is found to have been robust across the sample. Across farm size groups, the relatively larger farmers experienced faster technical change, which helped them to catch up and narrow the productivity gap with the smaller farmers. 2018-03-30T19:40:24Z 2018-03-30T19:40:24Z 2018-03 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/925511522248076351/Too-small-to-be-beautiful-the-farm-size-and-productivity-relationship-in-Bangladesh http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29567 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8387 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper South Asia Bangladesh
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic RURAL LIVELIHOOD
TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY
FARM SIZE
POVERTY
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY
TECHNICAL CHANGE
STOCHASTIC FRONTIER MODEL
spellingShingle RURAL LIVELIHOOD
TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY
FARM SIZE
POVERTY
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY
TECHNICAL CHANGE
STOCHASTIC FRONTIER MODEL
Gautam, Madhur
Ahmed, Mansur
Too Small to Be Beautiful? : The Farm Size and Productivity Relationship in Bangladesh
geographic_facet South Asia
Bangladesh
relation Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8387
description This paper examines the agricultural productivity–farm size relationship in the context of Bangladesh. Features of Bangladesh's agriculture help overcome several limitations in testing the inverse farm size–productivity relationship in other developing country settings. A stochastic production frontier model is applied using data from three rounds of a household panel survey to estimate simultaneously the production frontier and the technical inefficiency functions. The “correlated random effects” approach is used to control for unobserved heterogeneous household effects. Methodologically, the results suggest that the stochastic production frontier models that ignore the inefficiency function are likely mis-specified, and may result in misleading conclusions on the farm size–productivity relationship. Empirically, the findings confirm that the farm size and productivity relationship is negative, but with the inverse relationship diminishing over time. Total factor productivity growth, driven by technical change, is found to have been robust across the sample. Across farm size groups, the relatively larger farmers experienced faster technical change, which helped them to catch up and narrow the productivity gap with the smaller farmers.
format Working Paper
author Gautam, Madhur
Ahmed, Mansur
author_facet Gautam, Madhur
Ahmed, Mansur
author_sort Gautam, Madhur
title Too Small to Be Beautiful? : The Farm Size and Productivity Relationship in Bangladesh
title_short Too Small to Be Beautiful? : The Farm Size and Productivity Relationship in Bangladesh
title_full Too Small to Be Beautiful? : The Farm Size and Productivity Relationship in Bangladesh
title_fullStr Too Small to Be Beautiful? : The Farm Size and Productivity Relationship in Bangladesh
title_full_unstemmed Too Small to Be Beautiful? : The Farm Size and Productivity Relationship in Bangladesh
title_sort too small to be beautiful? : the farm size and productivity relationship in bangladesh
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2018
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/925511522248076351/Too-small-to-be-beautiful-the-farm-size-and-productivity-relationship-in-Bangladesh
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29567
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