<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><xml><records><record><source-app name="Biblio" version="7.x">Drupal-Biblio</source-app><ref-type>17</ref-type><contributors><authors><author><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Alexander Bilson Darku</style></author><author><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Stavroula Malla</style></author><author><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">Kien C. Tran</style></author></authors></contributors><titles><title><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">HISTORICAL REVIEW OF AGRICULTURALEFFICIENCY STUDIES</style></title><secondary-title><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">CAIRN Research Network</style></secondary-title></titles><dates><year><style  face="normal" font="default" size="100%">2013</style></year></dates><language><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">eng</style></language><abstract><style face="normal" font="default" size="100%">&lt;p&gt;Traditional growth and development theories have demonstrated how efficient allocation of&amp;nbsp;resources in all economies depends on economic efficiency in the agriculture sector. Historically,&amp;nbsp;the agriculture sector has been supplying productive resources to other sectors in the economy as&lt;br&gt;its productivity and efficiency improves over time. This report takes a comprehensive and&amp;nbsp;historical look at the literature on agriculture efficiency from 1950 to 2011, while focusing on the&amp;nbsp;various methodologies used and important results relevant for agricultural policy formulation.&amp;nbsp;The review revealed that overtime the complexity of method used to examine agricultural&amp;nbsp;efficiency has increased from simple index numbers and econometric analysis to complex nonparametric&amp;nbsp;and parametric analysis. The overall results indicated that farms are generally&amp;nbsp;technically and scale inefficient. Smaller farms are less efficient than big farms because large&amp;nbsp;farms tend to adopt new technology faster than smaller farms due to their relative better access to&amp;nbsp;credit, information, and other scarce resources. Technical efficiency is related to economic&amp;nbsp;factors, environmental conditions, locations, size of local market, and agricultural policies.&amp;nbsp;However, in general, the level of farm inefficiencies have been reducing as new and better farm&amp;nbsp;practices have been implemented over time. Farmers’ education level has positive and significant&amp;nbsp;impact on farm level efficiency. Organic farmers on the average are more efficient than&amp;nbsp;conventional farmers. Most importantly, different econometric specification led to different&amp;nbsp;results. For policy purposes the results from the studies shed light on the importance of&lt;br&gt;improvement in extension services and increased access to credit and other resources as critical&amp;nbsp;components of agricultural policy options to make farms, particularly the small ones, more&amp;nbsp;technically and scale efficient. The results also demonstrate the importance of implementing&lt;br&gt;agricultural policies that pays attention to other farm characteristics such as location and type of&amp;nbsp;farms.&lt;/p&gt;</style></abstract></record></records></xml>