The Study Of Technical Efficiency In Sichuan's Agricultural Production Based On Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Sichuan is a large agricultural province, agriculture plays an important role in the national economy, but it's not a strong agricultural province, its competitiveness is still week. Under the multiple pressures of consumption growth, strong competition, resource constraints, the best realistic way for Sichuan's agriculture to get a better and faster development and a stronger competitiveness is to develop the potentiality of agricultural production, that means agricultural production can not only rely on the expansion of resources, it should rely on technology advancing and improvements of technincal efficiency. Technical efficiency of agricultural production is the ratio of an agricultural production unit's actual output and ideal output in at certain period of time, under a certain conditions of technical equipment and investment. The purpose of this study is to analys the technical efficiency of agricultural production in Sichuan province from comparative perspectives of vertical and lateral, macro-regional and micro-farmers, and significant factors which influence the agricultural technical efficiency, thereby provides an empirical evidence for agricultural policy about improving the technical efficiency in Sichuan's agricultural production.By the means of stochastic frontier analysis, this paper established a econometric model acording to the Battese&Coelli (1995) model based on the panel data of 21 areas from 2000 to 2007 and 110 farmers from 2005 to 2007 in Sichuan province, measured the technical efficiency of agricultural production of the regions and farmers in the observation period, and analysised the influence factors and the output elements' elasticity of substitution, the conclusions as follows:First, the average level of technical efficiency of agricultural production in 21 areas and 110 farmers are more than 65% in the observation period, the real agricultural output is still lagging behind the boundary; from vertical view, technical progress exist in agricultural production of Sichuan Province, but the trends of technical efficiency of agricultural production is vague; from lateral view, the technical efficiency of agricultural production in Sichuan horizontal distribution of the regional differences and differences between households are larger and this difference the possibility of convergence.Second, the financial input, the institutional reform, the science and technology and land are the four factors play positive roles on the improvement of technical efficiency of agricultural production. Third, the average output elasticity of substitution of cultivated area and intermediate material input are positive, meaning that an increase in land and capital inputs still has a huge role for agricultural production in Sichuan Province; the average labor elasticity of 21 regions is negative, that means the labor is excess from the macro-view, but it's positive in farmers, meaning that labor is short from the micro-view.Finally, some policy is recommendated to improve the technical efficiency of agricultural production in Sichuan Province: Firstly, the financial budget should be done according to the regional characteristics, and focus on the areas such as the agricultural science research and spreading, construction of infrastructure. Secondly, the transfer of rural surplus labor force should be considered carefully accordance with local conditions and promoted by means of training and absorption by local industries. Thirdly, institutional innovation of agriculture is also significant for technical efficiency of agricultural production, such as circulation of land use right in order to scale operation, encourage farmers to do innovation on management system according to the market.