Title: Frontier production functions, technical efficiency and panel data: with application to tea gardens in India

Authors: Shrabanti Maity; Krishna Singh

Addresses: Department of Economics, Assam University, Silchar, Assam, India ' Department of Economics, University of Gur Banga, India

Abstract: The paper attempts to analyse the efficiency of tea gardens across Assam and West Bengal of India for the period of 2004-2013. The stochastic frontier approach has been applied to estimate the efficiency of large, medium and small tea gardens. Estimated results reveal that the proper training of the labourer, utilisation of the available land and modernisation of the machinery may increase the output of the tea gardens. The study concludes that there is intra-state, as well as inter-state variation in the efficiency of the tea gardens over time and no concrete relation, is found between garden size and efficiency.

Keywords: stochastic production frontier; technical efficiency; tea gardens; panel data; time-varying random effects model.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2021.113797

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2021 Vol.27 No.4, pp.571 - 591

Received: 07 Sep 2018
Accepted: 17 Feb 2019
Published online: 31 Mar 2021 *

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