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Assessing total factor productivity change in the aquaculture industry in China: A Färe-Primont productivity index and panel quantile regression
Abstract
Given the limited resources and growing demand for aquatic products, China's aquaculture industry must increase its output. Improving the total factor productivity (TFP) change is an importance step toward long-term sustainable development of the aquaculture industry. The study aims to examine the productivity change, particularly TFP change and its components, and to identify the factors influencing TFP change in China's aquaculture industry during 2010–2018. The Färe-Primont productivity index (FPI) is employed to assess the TFP change in the aquaculture industry. Subsequently, a novel introduced model - fixed effects panel quantile regression via the method of moments is used to analyze the heterogeneous effects of the influencing factors, namely, capture fishery ratio, extension workers, disaster losses, and real gross domestic product (GDP), on TFP change and efficiency change (ECH). The results show that the TFP grew by an average of 1.35 % during the period studied, driven mainly by a 3.63 % improvement in ECH, despite a decline of 1.86 % in technical change. Notably, inland provinces such as Chongqing, Shaanxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan predominantly exhibit higher TFP change than the coastal provinces. The results also demonstrated that socio-economic factors exerted differential impacts on the TFP change and the ECH of the aquaculture industry. The real GDP has positively influenced TFP change, exhibiting a downward trend across quantiles whereas the extension workers has positively contribution in TFP change only at lower quantiles (0.10–0.50). Moreover, the disaster losses exert a positive impact on TFP change only at higher quantiles (0.50–0.90). The real GDP was significantly improved ECH at all quantiles, while the disaster losses have a negative impact on ECH across all the quantiles except for the 0.10 quantile level. These findings highlight several policy implications. First, the aquaculture industry should train more technical workforce and facilitate cross-departmental rotations for these personnel. Second, less economically developed provinces need to adopt a better scientific management practice and improve the allocation of resources in aquaculture operations. Lastly, regions prone to natural disasters should develop more robust systems for disaster preparedness and response systems to minimize productivity losses.
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China remains the largest nation of marine capture fisheries in the world in the last few decades, at the cost of offshore fisheries degradation by overfishing. Although fisheries regulations have become gradually tightened, the recovering evidences are weak and the catch species compositions are far from satisfactory. To explore better and reasonable countermeasures, besides the “zero growth” policy (i.e. the national total fisheries production limitation), five targets with different ecological traits were selected for stock assessment and rebuilding by Monte Carlo Catch-Maximum Sustainable Yield method. The results showed the control of total rather than species catch could not lead to the recovery of fisheries and maintain community function. Individual species showed different responses to overfishing according to their biological characteristics. High trophic level species can be sensitive to overfishing, and difficult to rebuild stocks after collapse. Pelagic small fish resources increased first but eventually decreased under high fishing pressure. Scientific-based restocking can enhance resource recovery. Besides “zero growth” policy, fisheries management should be further refined, in particular for main economic species based on their biological traits, as well as the support of reliable fisheries statistics and regulation implementation in place. To relieve the conflict between rising fishery products demand and falling catches, aquaculture and seeking resources from the high seas and EEZs are supposed to be successful ways, on the premise of taking full account of ecological health, maritime safety, and food security.
Aquatic products are important sources of protein and food consumption, which are pivotal to solving the problem of food shortage. As the world’s largest producer of aquatic products, China’s aquaculture has developed rapidly. However, a large quantity of pollutants has also been generated in the fish farming process, which is detrimental to the sustainable development of China’s aquaculture. Therefore, under double constraints with regard to resources and the environment, fishery development must achieve cleaner production. Measuring green total factor productivity in aquaculture is fundamental to improving aquaculture production efficiency and reducing pollution emissions. This paper investigated the green total factor productivity in China using the SBM-ML method and analyzed the dynamic evolution of fish farming, measuring its change characteristics with regard to time and spatial differences. The results indicated that the total factor productivity indexes of mariculture and freshwater aquaculture in China are 1.050 and 1.060, respectively. Regionally, mariculture in the East China Sea region has the highest green total factor productivity of 1.072, followed by the South China Sea region with 1.056, and the green total factor productivity in the Yellow Sea region is the lowest—only 1.030. The results of the freshwater aquaculture calculations showed the opposite geographical distribution characteristics in China, with the highest in the western region (1.098), followed by the central region (1.046), with the lowest being in the eastern region (1.038). Evidently, both mariculture and freshwater aquaculture have noticeable spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Relevant policy recommendations are provided to improve the green production efficiency of fishery.
Climate change poses a serious threat for aquacultural productivity. Employing the Autoregressive
Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, this research aims to evaluate the economic impact of climate
change on aquaculture in Vietnam, drawing on time series data from 1981 to 2013 and including
aquaculture yield, acreage, investment, labor, temperature, rainfall, and damage costs to aquacul�ture caused by natural disasters. The results show that aquaculture yield depends not only on the
current value of inputs, but also on their lag values and the yield itself. The results also show that
rainfall, storm surges and tropical cyclones negatively affect aquaculture production. After any
natural disaster, it takes at least two years to recover from the repercussions for productivity
and return to the previous norm. To reduce the vulnerability of aquacultural communities,
this study suggests that the state could establish a climate resilience fund specifically for small
and medium-scale aquaculture farmers, providing special financial support for those affected by
natural disasters.
To resolve the environmental problems of China's aquaculture industry, we must examine the current situation and comprehensively consider aquaculture growth, resource conservation and environmental protection. Using the unit investigation and evaluation method to evaluate the nonpoint source pollution of each province, this paper calculates eco-efficiency to evaluate the coordination of environment and aquaculture growth based on the slacks-based measure directional distance function dealing with undesirable outputs. The results reveal that the eco-efficiency of aquaculture in China from 2003 to 2018 is 0.70 and obviously lower than the industry's economic efficiency, indicating aquaculture development has not been coordinated with resources and the environment. Environmental pollution brings great loss to the economic efficiency of aquaculture. Specifically, eastern China, with the highest aquaculture output, shows the best degree of coordination, followed by western China. Six provinces or province-level municipalities, including Fujian, Shanghai, Beijing, Hainan and Tianjin, are growing soundly and rapidly, while central China exhibits the most obvious imbalance among the environment, resources and aquaculture development.
Recent high dropout and low graduation rates in the South African higher education institutions as well as government funding cuts and the economic uncertainty due to COVID-19 pandemic have heightened the urgency for the higher education sector to improve its productivity. However, empirical evidence on the productivity growth of the sector remains unexplored. To address this gap, we applied a Färe-Primont index approach to a panel data of 22 public universities over an 8-year period to measure total factor productivity (TFP) and its components—technological change, technical, scale and mix efficiency changes. We also used a feasible generalised least squares model to assess the determinants of productivity and efficiency growth. The results show that the average TFP of the sector for the study period was 0.631, led by historically advantaged universities (0.894), whilst historically disadvantaged universities had lower average TFP (0.823). During the period, TFP increased by 3.43%, largely driven by scale and mix efficiency changes (5.32%) and technical efficiency change (0.83%), whilst technical change declined by 1.80%. In terms of university types, the comprehensive universities achieved the largest TFP growth (6.13%) followed by traditional universities (4.85%), and technology universities by 1.41%. TFP growth was positively influenced by student graduation rates, quality of academics and academic-student ratios. Therefore, policy considerations to improve the sector’s productivity and efficiency should consider investment on research and development, adoption of teaching and research innovations, re-skilling through training and education and aligning admission policies with staffing.
The eco-efficiency of freshwater aquaculture reflects the balance between freshwater fishery economy and ecological environment. Reasonable evaluation of eco-efficiency is of great significance to improve production value and reduce pollutant emissions. This study analyzes the eco-efficiency of China’s freshwater aquaculture from 2004 to 2019, based on SBM model and global Malmquist–Luenberger (GML) index model. Furthermore, it investigates the factors affecting the change of green total factor productivity (GTFP) in freshwater aquaculture according to GML decomposition index. The results show that the eco-efficiency of China’s freshwater aquaculture presents an improving trend, but it is still low. From a regional perspective, the eco-efficiency in coastal areas is better than that in non-coastal areas, and both regions are characterized by “high in the north and low in the South.” From the perspective of input and output, there is redundancy in factor input. The production value expansion potential shows an inverted “U” shape and gradually tends to saturation. The overall performance of pollutant emissions reduction potential is declining, and there is still potential for improvement. In addition, there is a GTFP change of 0.886–1.262 a year, where the dominating contribution is technology change (TC). According to the research results, the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are put forward.
We analyse persistent and transient technical efficiency of crop farms in Austria from 2003 to 2017 by estimating the four-component stochastic frontier model using a multi-step procedure and extend it to account for heterogeneity bias by introducing the Mundlak adjustments. Moreover, we examine the determinants of both transient and persistent technical inefficiency. Results show that farms with favourable natural conditions, a higher share of family labour, and a lower share of owned land are more persistently efficient. Farm specialization, size, and farmers’ age are positively associated with transient efficiency, while subsidies have adverse impacts. Significant technologi- cal progress coupled with, on average decreasing technical efficiency indicates a diverging sector.
KEYWORDS
Continuously improving freshwater aquaculture efficiency will promote the sustainable development of freshwater aquaculture, which is crucial to ensure aquatic food supply. In particular, measuring the total factor productivity (TFP) of freshwater aquaculture to find ways to improve its efficiency is of great significance to sustainable development of freshwater aquaculture industry. Therefore, based on directional distance function, this paper constructs a meta-frontier Malmquist index (MMI) model by considering the regional heterogeneity to evaluate the TFP of freshwater aquaculture of China from 2004 to 2019. The results show that (1) from the perspective of time, TFP fluctuated significantly from 2004 to 2012, while after 2013, TFP remained around 1 with small fluctuation. In other words, freshwater aquaculture in China began to maintain a relatively negative state of development. (2) From a regional point of view, this study found that freshwater aquaculture TFP of inland region is better than the TFP of coastal region. (3) From the decomposition index, the variation of freshwater aquaculture TFP was driven by the combined effect of technology change (TC) and technical efficiency change (EC). In addition, the decomposition index efficiency shows that the technical efficiency decreases and the management efficiency changes little. (4) The gap of freshwater aquaculture technology in coastal areas is very small, and close to the optimal technical level. While in inland region, on the contrary, there is more room for improvement. According to the above empirical results, this paper finally gives some policy suggestions to improve the TFP to ensure the sustainable development of freshwater aquaculture.
Despite contributing to healthy diets for billions of people, aquatic foods are often undervalued as a nutritional solution because their diversity is often reduced to the protein and energy value of a single food type (‘seafood’ or ‘fish’)1, 2, 3–4. Here we create a cohesive model that unites terrestrial foods with nearly 3,000 taxa of aquatic foods to understand the future impact of aquatic foods on human nutrition. We project two plausible futures to 2030: a baseline scenario with moderate growth in aquatic animal-source food (AASF) production, and a high-production scenario with a 15-million-tonne increased supply of AASFs over the business-as-usual scenario in 2030, driven largely by investment and innovation in aquaculture production. By comparing changes in AASF consumption between the scenarios, we elucidate geographic and demographic vulnerabilities and estimate health impacts from diet-related causes. Globally, we find that a high-production scenario will decrease AASF prices by 26% and increase their consumption, thereby reducing the consumption of red and processed meats that can lead to diet-related non-communicable diseases5,6 while also preventing approximately 166 million cases of inadequate micronutrient intake. This finding provides a broad evidentiary basis for policy makers and development stakeholders to capitalize on the potential of aquatic foods to reduce food and nutrition insecurity and tackle malnutrition in all its forms.
The Chinese government has made tremendous efforts to promote the advancement of the aquaculture industry through the technical resources of its extension system. However, research on the Chinese aquaculture extension system is limited. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the role of China’s aquaculture extension system in the sustainable development of aquaculture since the Reform and Opening Up in 1978. We find that China has established a relatively comprehensive aquaculture extension system under the leadership of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The five-level state-owned extension organizations are the main body, and research institutions, universities, social organizations, and aquatic enterprises are important segments. Technical extension programs, demonstration zones, and technical consultation are the three popular aquaculture extension models. However, problems such as insufficient funding, outmoded staff structures, and inefficient management systems should be addressed to promote the prosperity of the aquaculture industry.
‘Gher’ farming system refers to the joint operation of three enterprises: freshwater prawn, carp and HYV rice practiced widely in the southwestern coastal Bangladesh. The paper estimates growth in total factor productivity (TFP) and its six finer components (technical change, technical, scale and mix efficiency changes, residual-scale and residual-mix efficiency changes) of the prawn-carp-rice joint culture and identifies their determinants by exploring a panel database of a cohort of 90 ‘gher’ farms over a 13-year timespan (2002–14) from southwest Bangladesh. The aim is to judge sustainability of this unique farming system. Results revealed that TFP grew @ 0.86% p.a. mainly powered by technical change @ 0.54% p.a. and mix-efficiency change @0.06% p.a. while technical and scale efficiency changes declined @ 0.17% and 0.10% p.a., respectively. Farm-level socio-economic factors exerted differential impacts on TFP growth and its components. The key conclusion is that the ‘prawn-carp-rice’ joint culture in ‘gher’ system is sustainable and has the potential to support growth of the broader agricultural sector and the Bangladesh economy. Experience and education, ‘gher’ area, share of family labour and tenancy significantly improved TFP growth and technical change. The policy interventions include additional funds in education for ‘gher’ farmers, land and tenurial reforms to consolidate operation size and training for female labourers to improve long-term growth of the ‘prawn-carp-rice’ joint farming.
China is the world’s biggest fishing nation and a major player in the global seafood trade. Its fisheries development can decisively influence the global seafood trade, food security and marine conservation. In recent years, significant changes have taken place in China’s fisheries management priorities, policies and regulations. In this paper, we review the evolving fisheries management practices in China to delineate changes in the management policies, methods and their performances from 1949 to 2019. We determined that the following issues impede the development, implementation and enforcement of fisheries policies and regulations, namely the large size of the fishing fleet, large and poorly organized fisheries population, the “hidden” fishing capacity, uniform management approaches that sometimes fail to account for local conditions, lack of clearly defined and allocated fishing rights, limited data quality and availability, insufficient fisheries monitoring programmes, absence of a robust scientific input framework and insufficient stakeholder involvement. Combining those problems with China’s current management initiatives, we propose recommendations for China’s future fisheries reforms. We hope this paper can inform China’s marine fisheries policies and provide valuable references for further researches related to China’s sustainable fisheries management.
The global economic growth has triggered the continual increase in oil demand for transportation and petrochemical sectors which offshoots environmental pollution. Though there exists literature on environmental Kuznets curve, however, very few examine the scope in the light of fossil fuel energy production. This paper investigated the dynamic effect of oil production on carbon emissions in 15 oil-producing countries by accounting for the role of electricity production, economic growth, democracy, and trade over the period 1980-2010. Using the novel Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) with fixed effects, the results found an inverted U-shape relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions only at median and higher emission countries, thus, validating the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Oil production increases CO2 emissions significantly from the first to sixth quantiles with greater effect at the lowest quantile and weaker effect at the highest quantile. Electricity production was found to increase CO2 emissions while trade condenses CO2 emissions across all the quantiles thereby confirming the pollution halo hypothesis for oil-producing countries. The effect of democracy was positive across all the quantiles but only significant in countries with average CO2 emissions. The findings provide insight for policymakers to mitigate CO2 emissions in oil-producing countries through diversification and clean energy technologies such as carbon capture and storage.
This study examines how production environment characteristics affect total factor productivity (TFP) and technical efficiency (TE) in aquaculture farms. Enhancing productivity is important for increasing resource use efficiency, especially in developing countries where improvements in the aquaculture sector can enhance food security for low‐ and middle‐income people and improve farmer livelihood. In the present study, 580 aquaculture farms from different areas of Bangladesh were sampled using stratified random sampling techniques. A Fisher quantity index and data envelopment analysis were used to analyze TFP and TE, respectively. In addition, a rank‐sum test was used to investigate how production environment characteristics affect TFP and TE. The results show that farmers could significantly reduce input while maintaining the same level of output. Furthermore, they demonstrate that the TFP and TE of a farm are significantly affected by environmental characteristics, varying with geographical variation in water availability, color, and plants; feed types; and culture systems. Dissemination of the results through training programs and extension services provided by public or private stakeholders could help extensive pond farmers in developing countries improve productivity and efficiency and thereby help provide food and improve livelihood conditions in developing countries.
The aquaculture sector is a capital intensive production process where access to credit is helpful in order to develop and manage farms in developing countries. Nevertheless, a supply of credit is often not readily available, which is creating credit constraint situations. This study investigates how credit constraints affect the productivity of aquaculture farmers in Bangladesh. An endogenous switching regression model is used to estimate the effects of credit constraints on productivity. The results show that productivity is significantly higher for farmers who are not exposed to credit constraints. This result reveals significant production-enhancing effects when using modern inputs for both constrained and unconstrained farmers. However, the effects are larger for the credit-unconstrained farmers because they have the opportunity to buy higher quality inputs and use them in a better input mix.
Management of capture fisheries has been a perpetual problem facing all fisheries countries worldwide. This study first analyzes the features of China's capture fisheries, and points out that its management tends to be more complex and difficult than any other country in the world. It goes on to describe the history of China's fisheries management and the development process of China's fisheries policies, recognizing the role of fisheries policies in guiding and promoting industrial production during the whole development process. With Fisheries Law of the People's Republic of China as the basic framework, China is thought to have initially formed a fisheries management system with a complete structure and powerful measures for constant improvement and reinforcement. Major systems and measures of China's fisheries management are summarized, with their corresponding effects being evaluated to a certain extent. China's continuous introduction of advanced fisheries management philosophies over the past decades, especially since the reform and opening up, plays an active role in securing the prosperity of the following five industries: aquaculture, capture fisheries, processing and logistics, enhancement, and recreational fisheries; more effort has been put into fisheries ecological environment restoration; and law-based governance capacity in fisheries has been significantly improved. However, due to the characteristics of China's fisheries, as well as the complex and uncertain nature of fisheries itself, certain prominent problems still remain in its capture fisheries. With reference to relevant fisheries development planning, the study concludes with a prospect that China's capture fisheries management will be steered towards the total catch control of fisheries resources and the intensification of resource conservation and ecological restoration. Keywords: Capture fisheries, Fisheries management, China, Practices, Prospect
In a world of 9 billion people and a widening income gap between the rich and poor, it is time to rethink how aquaculture can strengthen its contribution to the second UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of zero hunger in our generation. The disparity in the level of sustainable aquaculture development at present, between and within countries, especially regarding human access to farmed aquatic food remains highly variable across the globe. This paper offers a fresh look at the opportunities from using systems thinking and new open innovation measuring tools to grow sustainable aquaculture. Political will in many nations is the main constraint to aquaculture in realising its potential as an: accessible source of micronutrients and nutritious protein; aid to meeting conservation goals; economic prosperity generator where benefits extend to locals and provider of indirect social benefits such as access to education and well‐being, among others. Resources to enable strong partnerships (SDG 17) between academia, civic society, government and industry should be prioritised by governments to build a sustainable aquatic food system, accessible to all, forever.
Several approaches have been proposed in the literature to compute technical efficiency indices that account for bad outputs. The literature is, however, less rich when it comes to incorporating bad outputs in productivity indices. In this context, this article extends the multiplicatively complete Färe–Primont productivity index to a generalized version that considers pollution. This novel pollution-adjusted total factor productivity (TFP) is the ratio of an aggregated measure of good outputs to an aggregated measure of bad outputs and non-polluting inputs, in such a way that the materials balance principle is not distorted. A decomposition of this new pollution-adjusted TFP is proposed using the by-production. The latter implies considering a technology that lies at the intersection of two sub-technologies: one for the production of good outputs and the other for the generation of pollution. The pollution-adjusted TFP is further decomposed into pollution-adjusted technical change and efficiency change. The latter is further broken down into technical, scale, mix, and residual efficiency change components. A crucial advantage of the Färe–Primont index is the verification of the transitivity property that allows multi-temporal and multilateral comparisons. The generalized (pollution-adjusted) Färe–Primont TFP proposed here is illustrated with a sample of French suckler cow farms surveyed over the period of 1990 to 2013. The bad outputs considered are greenhouse gas emissions, namely methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2), and nitrous oxide (N2O). The results reveal a decrease in pollution-adjusted TFP by 5.57% during the period, due to technological regress of 2.23%, and to technical efficiency decrease of almost 3.34%.
Applying the Färe–Primont index, this paper computes the total factor productivity (TFP)
index for microfinance institutions (MFIs) in terms of its six individual components:
technical change, technical, scale and mix efficiency changes and residual scale and residual mix efficiency changes. We use panel data of 342 MFIs from 61 countries covering the period 2003–2013. Results show that MFIs are operating at a low level of productivity with an overall annual rate of decline in TFP of 1.7 percent. Although technical progress, technical efficiency change and mix efficiency change components of TFP have increased over the study period, overall, TFP actually declined over time due to declining scale efficiency, residual scale-efficiency and/or residual mix efficiency changes. We found variations in regional performance with Sub-Saharan Africa experiencing the highest decline in TFP despite improvements in technical and mix efficiency changes. In contrast, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and South Asian regions have experienced a growth in TFP. Policy implications of these results are that MFIs should continue to pursue technical progress and aim to improve technical, scale and mix efficiency components by reallocating resources optimally. As well, MFIs should operate at an optimal scale and derive economies of scope by changing input and output mixes.
The technical efficiency of randomly sampled pangasius farms in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam was estimated using data envelopment analysis, and factors affecting technical and scale efficiency were examined with bootstrap truncated regression. The mean technical efficiency score assuming variable returns to scale was 0.84. The technical efficiency of downstream farmers was higher due to lower energy costs and stocking once a year. Most of the up- and midstream farms needed to pump water and stocked at least three times in 2 yr. Regression analysis showed a positive effect on technical efficiency of the farmers' education level and having experienced climate change impact through flooding or salinity intrusion in the past. Farms affected by salinity intrusion had a lower scale efficiency as they reduce stocking frequency and rate. In general, reducing fish mortality and the cost of inputs, increasing scale of operation, and being trained, using appropriate methods, in management strategies may improve technical efficiency.
Aquaculture’s contributions to food security in the Global South are widely misunderstood. Dominant narratives suggest that aquaculture contributes mainly to international trade benefiting richer Northern consumers, or provides for wealthy urban consumers in Southern markets. On the supply side, the literature promotes an idealized vision of ‘small-scale’, low input, semi-subsistence farming as the primary means by which aquaculture can contribute to food security, or emphasizes the role of ‘industrial’ export oriented aquaculture in undermining local food security. In fact, farmed fish is produced predominantly by a ‘missing middle’ segment of commercial and increasingly intensive farms, and overwhelmingly remains in Southern domestic markets for consumption by poor and middle income consumers in both urban and rural areas, making an important but underappreciated contribution to global food security.
In this study, the non-parametric data envelopment analysis was applied in a sample of 66 mussel aquaculture farms for the estimation of the level of technical efficiency. The differences in this estimated level of efficiency were investigated through the application of a Tobit regression model and a technical and economic descriptive analysis provided an indicative picture of the structure and the economic performance of the efficient farms. The results indicated significant inefficiencies in the utilization of the existing production technology. The estimated mean technical efficiency was 0.761, indicating that the mussel farms could increase their production by 23% given the level of inputs. Moreover, the results of the Tobit regression model showed that socio-demographic variables, such as farmer’s age, experience in aquaculture, vocational training, and level of education, can partly explain the efficiency differentials. The technical and economic analysis showed that the efficient mussel farms compared to the inefficient farms are larger in size, use less labor per hectare of sea area, and achieve higher net profit.
This paper estimates a translog stochastic production function to examine the determinants of technical efficiency of freshwater prawn farming in Bangladesh. Primary data has been collected using random sampling from 90 farmers of three villages in southwestern Bangladesh. Prawn farming displayed much variability in technical efficiency ranging from 9.50 to 99.94 % with mean technical efficiency of 65 %, which suggested a substantial 35 % of potential output can be recovered by removing inefficiency. For a land scarce country like Bangladesh this gain could help increase income and ensure better livelihood for the farmers. Based on the translog production function specification, farmers could be made scale efficient by providing more input to produce more output. The results suggest that farmers’ education and non-farm income significantly improve efficiency whilst farmers’ training, farm distance from the water canal and involvement in fish farm associations reduces efficiency. Hence, the study proposes strategies such as less involvement in farming-related associations and raising the effective training facilities of the farmers as beneficial adjustments for reducing inefficiency. Moreover, the key policy implication of the analysis is that investment in primary education would greatly improve technical efficiency.
The assessment of productivity change across companies and over time is of great importance for water utilities managers and regulators. In this paper, for the first time, we apply the Färe-Primont productivity index (FPI) to evaluate the productivity change for the 10 water and sewerage companies (WaSCs) and 12 water only companies (WoCs) in England and Wales during the years 2001–2008. The FPI is the only index that without price data allows making comparisons involving many firms and many periods. The results indicate that during the years 2001–2004 productivity improved which was mainly attributed to gains in efficiency whereas technical change remained constant, the exception being the year 2004. During the years 2005–2008 productivity showed a declining trend and any gains in efficiency were lost to the highly negative technical change on productivity growth. From a policy perspective, it has been illustrated the importance of using a reliable index to compute the productivity change of water companies when the performance of companies is used to set water tariffs. Finally, the decomposition of productivity change into several drivers allows water utilities and managers to identify the main factors on which they should act to improve productivity of the company.
This study applies the Färe–Primont index to calculate total factor productivity (TFP) indices for agriculture in 17 regions of Bangladesh covering a 61-year period (1948–2008). It decomposes the TFP index into six finer components (technical change, technical-, scale- and mix-efficiency changes, residual scale- and residual mix-efficiency changes). Results reveal that TFP grew at an average rate of 0.57% p.a. led by the Chittagong, Rajshahi, Rangpur, Dinajpur and Noakhali regions. TFP growth is largely powered by technological progress estimated at 0.74% p.a. Technical efficiency improvement is negligible (0.01% p.a.) due to stagnant efficiency in most of the regions. Decline in scale efficiency is also negligible (0.01% p.a.), but the decline in mix efficiency is high at 0.19% p.a. Decomposition of the components of TFP changes into finer measures of efficiency corrects the existing literature’s blame of a decline in technical efficiency as the main cause of poor TFP growth in Bangladesh. Among the sources, farm size, R&D investment, extension expenditure and crop specialisation positively influenced TFP growth, whereas the literacy rate had a negative influence on growth. Policy implications include encouraging investment in R&D and extension, land reform measures to increase average farm size, promotion of Green Revolution technology and crop diversification.
Productivity growth of the catfish-processing sector in the United States was measured over the time period of 1986 through 2005. The analysis evaluated the efficiency with which products are produced by catfish processing plants. The Malmquist index is employed to decompose the total factor productivity into growth associated with technical efficiency change and technological progress. The relationship between Farrell's measure of technical efficiency and the Shepard's distance function provides the theoretical foundation for estimating the Malmquist production index using data envelopment analysis. The results indicate that, between 1986 and 2005, there was no technical progress or adoption of new techniques with significant impact on catfish processing. Technical efficiency change, which is associated with input use efficiency, varied with type of fish size processed. It decreased from 1985 to 1995 as the industry struggled to establish the most efficient fish size to process. Between 1995 and 2005 the fluctuation continued but at a higher mean. Productivity growth and long-term competitiveness are likely to result from adoption of new processing innovations by the catfish-processing sector.
Rainbow trout farming is an important contributor to the aquaculture industry in Iran. This study number of the factors including the socio-economic factor was considered for analysing the factors affecting technical change in trout aquaculture. A two-stage estimation procedure for this analysis was applied. The Malmquist index is then employed to measure the productivity and technical change in the first stage, while the pooled logit and tobit models were performed in the second stage so as to ascertain factors affecting the technical change or innovation improvement. The study was conducted to utilize panel data of 207 trout farms in the country over a five-year period from 2003 to 2007. The results of this study revealed that the total factor productivity (TFP) growth of rainbow trout farming in the aquaculture sector is substantially formed from technical efficiency change rather than technical change or innovation improvement. Hence, Iran still has a room to improve the TFP growth in the trout aquaculture, and this can be done by shifting its production frontier through improving innovation and development of new technologies. Based on the marginal effects analysis derived from the pooled logit/tobit regression, the factors that mostly affected technical change positively were suitability of water temperature (13 to 18°C), extension workshop and educational level of the manager. Conversely, the negative factors included the governmental insurance coverage, pond size and being government tenure, such as public companies and cooperatives.
As the world population grows, the aquaculture sector faces challenges in the use of production systems to ensure the adequacy of the food supply. Technical efficiency analysis has been shown to be useful for improving resource management and production. This study provides a literature update and uses meta-regression analysis to examine the variations in aquaculture mean technical efficiency (MTE) scores based on 101 studies published from 1998 to 2023. The findings show that studies with larger model dimensions, different output measures, an input-oriented model specification and that analyse the exogenous variables of efficiency scores, freshwater aquaculture, and European data produce a narrower variance in MTE scores. In contrast, studies that use panel data and nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) generate wider variance in MTE scores. As a result of these investigations, the findings suggest the importance of selecting appropriate variables and sample sizes for efficiency estimates. Robustness checks of efficiency scores from the DEA and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) approaches are recommended for future studies. Different policies and regulations should be implemented in different countries and across different farming systems.
The continuous growth of the aquaculture sector has motivated numerous empirical studies investigating farm productivity and technical performance over time. However, empirical works focusing on low-value species in developing countries are scarcer due to the lack of data. This paper investigates the sources of productivity changes over time using a meta-frontier Malmquist productivity index. The dataset contains 2,100 observations in an unbalanced panel data set for pangas and tilapia in Bangladesh. The results indicate that the overall productivity index and its components increase over time but at a decreasing rate. The technology change effect has the largest impact, followed by technical efficiency change. The scale effects are less than one, indicating that farms are scale inefficient. Nevertheless, the convergence toward the technology frontier seems to level off due to a declining ability to minimize the efficiency change and technological change gaps over time. The results also show a larger disparity among the farms in recent years, lowering the mean technical efficiency, with a few farms driving the frontier outward and the average farms lagging.
In the social context of enhancing environmental quality and mitigating climate change, the improvement of carbon emission efficiency has emerged as a hot topic recently due to its promise as an approach to reduce emissions and improve environmental quality. A large volume of studies has identified technological progress as a critical factor affecting energy efficiency and pollution emission levels. From the perspective of national differences, the contributions of our study lied in constructing a system to measure technological progress based on the outputs and transformations of a country's technical progress level. Secondly, this paper examined the direct effect of technological progress on carbon emission efficiency, and the interaction effect between technological progress and energy intensity on carbon emission efficiency. Thirdly, we taking into account differences in the effect that technological progress can have on carbon emission efficiency in different national contexts. For this purpose, we evaluated the carbon emission efficiency of 59 countries in the period 1998–2016 using a super-SBM model, subsequently employing a national panel quantile regression method to explore the multiple effects of technological progress on the carbon emission efficiency of countries with different levels of efficiency. Our main findings indicate that the national carbon emission efficiency steadily increased across the study period, albeit with slight fluctuations, and that generally countries' carbon emission efficiency still exists great potential of enhancement. Technological progress will drive carbon emission efficiency to improve significantly, while this effect varies between countries with different levels of efficiency. Further, the interaction effects of technological progress and energy intensity are shown to exert complex effects on carbon emission efficiency, providing evidence that scientific and technological achievements need to be converted into productivity in time to offset the negative environmental effects of pollution and emissions. Governmental departments should, as a result, strengthen environmental supervision and urge enterprises to eliminate backward production capacity, introduce new technologies, and improve energy efficiency. Countries may realize the development of low-carbon sustainable societies by transforming their economic growth mode and adopting energy-saving production techniques.
The scientific research on aquaculture efficiency and productivity has been increasing over the years. This study aims to identify the publication trends and growth potential of aquaculture efficiency and productivity studies. A bibliometric analysis was employed for a sample of 85 scientific articles published during the 1998–2020 period. The findings show that authors and institutions have close groups in collaboration networks. Through the citation analysis, three clusters were obtained that were related to the use of stochastic frontier analysis in an empirical application, Norwegian salmon aquaculture, and different types of farms. For the temporal evolution of the keywords, earlier existing studies adopted a stochastic translog production function to assess the technical efficiency of aquaculture production, whereas later studies used data envelopment analyses, which focused on more diverse research objectives. The farms or subsectors of aquaculture in Norway, Bangladesh, and Vietnam have been analyzed in-depth for the efficiency and productivity in the existing studies. Education, experience, and age are often used as determinants to explain the variations in technical efficiency. The present study concludes that aquaculture efficiency and productivity research is not moving toward a mature stage. Several of the discovered issues are only focused on specific countries, and there is still room for methodological improvement in assessing aquaculture efficiency and productivity. Nevertheless, research collaborations are growing, and new research trends that are related to environmental regulation and pollution show great interest in aquaculture efficiency and productivity. This study provides a clear roadmap for researchers and practitioners to understand the publication patterns and hotspots in the research in this field.
Based on China’s 30 provinces penal data, from 1990-2017, this paper uses the quantile regression model to estimate the impact of fossil energy abundance and clean energy abundance on economic growth and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The findings show that fossil energy abundance exerts a greater impact on economic growth in the intermediate quantile provinces such as Hebei, Jilin, Liaoning, and Shandong because these provinces have larger petroleum processing and coal gas production industries. The CO2 emissions in the upper 90th quantile provinces such as Liaoning, Shanxi, and Shandong, receive the biggest impact from fossil energy abundance because these provinces consume more coal and oil. However, the impacts of renewable energy abundance on economic growth in the 50th-75th, upper 90th, and 75th-90th quantile groups are greater, since their renewable energy industry is growing faster. The influence of renewable energy abundance on CO2 emissions in all quantile groups is positive, meaning it does not play a prominent role in mitigating CO2 emissions. Therefore, each quantile province should formulate specific policies to promote the growth of renewable energy and actively develop strategic emerging industries.
Up to now, China's mariculture has shifted from high growth to medium‐high growth, which not only means a slowdown in growth, but also a shift in growth impetus. How can China achieve dynamic transformation to promote sustainable development and maintain its status as a mariculture superpower? Using data on China's ten coastal regions from 2003 to 2017, this study applies stochastic frontier analysis and the Malmquist index decomposition method combined with the translog production function to incorporate capital, labour, resources, and total factor productivity (TFP) into the growth accounting framework of mariculture and explores the dynamic track of the growth power transformation of China's mariculture. The results indicate that although the contribution of capital fluctuates, it remains high for a long time. The contribution rate of TFP was very low at first, but since 2010, it has been increasing. After 2016, TFP has replaced capital input as the primary driving force of mariculture in China. The contributions of labour and resources are positive, but their roles are gradually reduced. The growth mode of factor input is no longer sustainable, and the growth of mariculture must ‘open up a new path’, which is TFP.
This paper analyses the operational efficiency of fish farming across EU Member States using a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. In the first stage, a non-oriented Slacks-Based Measure of efficiency (SBM) DEA model is used to compute efficiency scores in marine and freshwater finfish and shellfish aquaculture subsectors for different EU countries during the period 2014–2016. In a second stage, these scores are processed by standard, censored and fractional regression models to test the effects of some exogenous variables. Between 57% and 74% of the observations, depending on the subsector considered, were efficient. The average technical efficiency was 0.918 for freshwater finfish, 0.885 for marine finfish and 0.802 for shellfish. Extending the best practices to the inefficient countries would involve a reduction of feed costs (2.9% - 4.3%), livestock costs (9.0% - 11.8%), energy costs (2.4% - 25.3%), repairing costs (3.7% - 13.8%) and other operating costs (4.3% - 13.8%)at the same time that an improvement in production value totalling 0.03% for freshwater finfish, 2.13% for marine finfish and 0.37% for shellfish. As regards productivity change in the period under study, there has been a productivity regress in the case of freshwater finfish, productivity increase in the case of marine finfish and an initial productivity increase between 2014 and 2015 followed by a slight decrease between 2015 and 2016 in the case of shellfish. Results also indicate that countries specializing in cultivating freshwater and marine populations are more likely to be on the efficient frontier and that technical efficiency seems to be influenced by the size of the country's gross domestic product and capture fisheries.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the performance of the Indian non-life (general) insurance sector in terms of total factor productivity (TFP) over the period 2005–2016.
Design/methodology/approach
This study utilises Färe‒Primont index (FPI) to access the change in TFP and its components: technical change, technical efficiency and mix and scale efficiency over the observation period. Moreover, it employs the Mann–Whitney U -test to scrutinise the difference between the public and the private insurers in terms of growth in productivity.
Findings
The results reveal that the insurance sector possesses a very low level of TFP. Also, the results divulge an improvement of 11.98 per cent in TFP of the insurance sector at an annual average rate of 12.41 per cent over the observation period. The growth in productivity is mainly attributable to the improvement of 10.81 per cent in the scale‒mix efficiency. The progress in scale‒mix efficiency is mainly the result of improvements in residual scale and residual mix efficiency. The results also show that the privately owned insurers have experienced a high productivity growth rate than the state-owned insurers.
Practical implications
The results hold practical implications for the regulators, policymakers and decision makers of the Indian non-life insurance companies.
Originality/value
This study is the first of its kind to use FPI, which satisfies all economically relevant axioms and tests defined by the index number theory to comprehensively access the change in TFP of the Indian non-life insurance sector.
We study the conditions under which it is possible to estimate regression quantiles by estimating conditional means. The advantage of this approach is that it allows the use of methods that are only valid in the estimation of conditional means, while still providing information on how the regressors affect the entire conditional distribution. The methods we propose are not meant to replace the well-established quantile regression estimator, but provide an additional tool that can allow the estimation of regression quantiles in settings where otherwise that would be difficult or even impossible. We consider two settings in which our approach can be particularly useful: panel data models with individual effects and models with endogenous explanatory variables. Besides presenting the estimator and establishing the regularity conditions needed for valid inference, we perform a small simulation experiment, present two simple illustrative applications, and discuss possible extensions.
Several competing methodologies for TFP estimation have been developed in the past decades. A popular approach in the literature is index number computation. The most widely implemented TFP indices face however several important limitations. For example, Fisher, Tornqvist or Malmquist TFP indices do not satisfy the transitivity test, precluding reliable direct inter-temporal comparisons. The recently developed Färe-Primont TFP index satisfies this property, and therefore it is applied to analyse the evolution of TFP in the Irish beef sector between 2010 and 2016. Moreover, this index is multiplicatively complete, allowing a consistent decomposition of TFP growth in different sources. The sample of Irish beef farms used in the analysis is clustered to account for differences in production technology in the sector. The cluster-specific TFP changes computed were found to present important differences across the seven clusters identified. Significant TFP growth was identified in five of the classes, while TFP declined for the other two. Dispersion and mobility of the TFP levels indicate a lack of structural changes in the sector regardless of the cluster considered.
The Färe‐Primont index is used to evaluate total factor productivity (TFP) change and its components for a sample of French suckler cow farms in grassland areas in 1985–2014. The results reveal an increase in TFP of 6.6 per cent over the whole observation period, with technological progress being the major source of productivity growth. Meanwhile, efficiency decreased. Farms experienced great technological progress from 1991 to 2000. From a methodological point of view, the comparison with results obtained with Malmquist indexes shows similar trends but different magnitudes, with the Malmquist index overestimating the TFP and technological changes compared to the Färe‐Primont index. In addition, the use of a sequential approach that restricts technological change to being positive or null allows for the precise calculation of technology changes, disregarding the effects of external conditions that are captured in efficiency changes. Finally, the estimation of full dimensional efficient facets (FDEFs) that guarantees the positivity of all shadow prices used to assess the mix efficiency component of TFP change is promising.
Taking the aquaculture area, the number of farming boats and that of aquaculturist as input variables, the aquaculture production as desirable output variable and polluted economic loss as undesirable output variable, this paper conducts SBM model to evaluate the aquaculture efficiency based on the data of 16 aquaculture-developed provinces in China from 2004 to 2011. The results show the efficiency in China has not changed much in recent years with the efficiency values mainly between 0.39 and 0.53, and the efficiency of marine-aquaculture-dominated provinces is generally higher than that of freshwater-aquaculture-dominated ones. To analyze the difference under the efficiency, the panel Tobit model is used with education level factor, training factor, technology extension factor, technical level factor, scale factor and species factor as the efficiency influencing factors. The results show that technology extension factor and technical level factor have significant positive influence.
We compared stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods to calculate mean technical efficiency (MTE) of global aquaculture. A total of 36 published articles on technical efficiency of 55 aquaculture operations were reviewed. SFA yielded lower MTE estimates than DEA. MTE for Asia, Africa, Europe, and the USA was estimated to be 0.64, 0.71, 0.80, and 0.73, respectively, indicating considerable scope for increasing output of aquaculture with the currently available array of inputs and existing technology.
In this study we measure change in total factor productivity for production of Atlantic salmon in Norway from 2001 to 2008. The Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) is used. Our results demonstrate that total factor productivity change measured by MPI increased from 2001 to 2005, but thereafter regressed. This is due to a regress in the technical change component of the MPI. The efficiency change component is as strong as before. We interpret this result as an indication that the industry has reached a level of technological sophistication from where it is difficult to make substantial progress. For an individual producer it may still be possible to improve efficiency by catching up relative to the best practice frontier. When this possibility is exhausted, the total factor productivity change for the industry may come to a halt.
This article builds on the literature investigating productivity and efficiency in the Norwegian salmon farming industry. The objective of this article is to investigate the determinants of inefficiency. We use a stochastic frontier approach that allows the estimation of a production function and an inefficiency function. The sources of inefficiency can be separated into temporary shocks and factors that lead to permanent efficiency differences. The results indicate an improvement in technical efficiency over time. This improvement can partly be explained by a restructuring of the industry, with firms becoming bigger and more specialized, as well as by improvements in government regulations. The inefficiency that is still present is mainly the result of temporary shocks. Disease outbreaks seem to be the most important of these temporary shocks, as disease problems lead to early harvesting or destruction of the fish and thereby, obviously, increase inefficiency.
This paper examines recent advances in production economics with special reference to efficiency measurement using production frontiers and its implications for aquaculture management. Compared with agriculture and other industries, the use of production frontiers in aquaculture is still very limited. However, in recent years several frontier applications in aquaculture have appeared in the literature, suggesting potential applications of these techniques in aquaculture. A synopsis of stochastic frontier production function model and data envelopment analysis (DEA), the two most popular approaches to efficiency measurement, is presented, followed by a review of recent frontier studies in shrimp, carp and tilapia production. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of future development and prospects of frontier applications for aquaculture management.
A simple minimization problem yielding the ordinary sample quantiles in the location model is shown to generalize naturally to the linear model generating a new class of statistics we term "regression quantiles." The estimator which minimizes the sum of absolute residuals is an important special case. Some equivariance properties and the joint aymptotic distribution of regression quantiles are established. These results permit a natural generalization to the linear model of certain well-known robust estimators of location. Estimators are suggested, which have comparable efficiency to least squares for Gaussian linear models while substantially out-performing the least-squares estimator over a wide class of non-Gaussian error distributions.
This study investigates the sources of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in rainbow trout production in Iran using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The Malmquist index is then employed to decompose the TFP growth into technical efficiency change and technological progress. We utilized panel data of 207 trout farms in the country over a 5-year period from 2003 to 2007. The results of this study revealed that TFP growth of rainbow trout farming has an increasing trend over the period at an average annual rate of 3.7%. The trend of cumulative technological change is negative and tends to be contrary to cumulative technical efficiency change. Although there is no technological change or innovation on trout farming, the technical efficiency change was found to be the sole source for TFP change, whereas the mean of technical efficiency was estimated to be about 66%. Therefore, there is still a great relative potential for increasing trout production through improvement in managerial efficiency as well as technological progress. The study suggests that Iran also has considerable room to enhance trout aquaculture's TFP growth by shifting the production frontier with adoption of new technologies and improving innovation.
Profitability change can be decomposed into the product of a total factor productivity (TFP) index and an index measuring changes in relative prices. Many TFP indexes can be further decomposed into measures of technical change, technical efficiency change, scale efficiency change and mix efficiency change. The class of indexes that can be decomposed in this way includes the Fisher, Törnqvist and Hicks-Moorsteen TFP indexes but not the Malmquist TFP index of Caves, Christensen and Diewert (1982). This paper develops data envelopment analysis methodology for computing and decomposing the Hicks-Moorsteen index. The empirical feasibility of the methodology is demonstrated using country-level agricultural data covering the period 1970-2001. The paper explains why relatively small countries tend to be the most productive, and why favourable movements in relative prices tend to simultaneously increase net returns and decrease productivity. Australia appears to have experienced this relative price effect since at least 1970. Thus, if Australia is a price-taker in output and input markets, Australian agricultural policy-makers should not be overly concerned about the estimated 15 per cent decline in agricultural productivity that has taken place over the last three decades. Copyright 2010 The Author. AJARE 2010 Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc. and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.
The competition among shrimp producing countries, the rapid advances in technology and the increase in market demand suggest that the shrimp industry at a global level and in Mexico in particular needs to take appropriate measures to maintain its viability and be able to compete successfully. This can be achieved by making better use of the available scarce resources and appropriate technology without further deteriorating the environment. Decision makers, i.e. policy-makers and farmers, are challenged with the responsibility of planning and conducting aquaculture development in a sustainable way whereby social, environmental and economic goals are simultaneously satisfied.