Technical and environmental efifciency of hog production in China-A stochastic frontier production function analysis

摘要

This article analyses the technical and environmental efifciency of hog production in China using data from the China Agricultural Product Cost-Beneift Compilation (NDRC 2005–2013) and the First National Census of Pol ution:Manual of Discharge Coefifcient of Livestock and Poultry Industry (IEDA and NIES 2009). The empirical results show a great variation in environmental efifciency, ranging from 0.344 to 0.973 with a mean value of 0.672 that declines over time. Southwest China is found to be the most environmental y efifcient region, while the Northeast and the Northwest are the least efifcient. Another ifnding is that technical and environmental efifciencies are highly correlated in hog production;the most environ-mental y efifcient regions are usual y found to have high technical efifciency, and vice versa. In addition, we computed the output elasticities with respect to each factor input. The results show that feed is the most efifcient input, with an output elasticity of approximately 0.551, which is much higher than the elasticity of the nitrogen surplus, other capital or labour. The output elasticity with respect to the nitrogen surplus is 0.287 on average. Final y, the scale elasticity in hog production is slightly higher than 1.