scholarly journals Stochastic Production Frontier Models to Explore Constraints on Household Travel Expenditures Considering Household Income Classes

Author(s):  
Sofyan M. Saleh ◽  
Sugiarto Sugiarto

This paper explores the variation of household travel expenditure frontiers (HTEFs) prior to CC reform in Jakarta. This study incorporates the variation of household income classes into the modeling of HTEFs and investigates the degree to which various determinants influence levels of HTEF. The HTEF is defined as an unseen maximum (capacity) amount of money that a certain income class is willing to dedicate to their travel. A stochastic production frontier is applied to model and explore upper bound household travel expenditure (HTE). Using a comprehensive household travel survey (HTS) in Jakarta in 2004, the observed HTE spending in a month is treated as an exogenous variable. The estimation results obtained using three proposed models, for low, medium and high income classes, show that HTEFs are significantly associated with life stage structure attributes, socio-demographics and life environment factors such as professional activity engagements, which is disclosed to be varied across income classes. Finding further reveals that considerable differences in average of HTEFs across models. This finding calls for the formulation of policies that consider the needs to be addressed for low and medium income groups in order to promote more equity policy thereby leading to more acceptable CC reform.

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 408-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERDIKUL QUSHIM ◽  
JEFFREY M. GILLESPIE ◽  
BASU DEB BHANDARI ◽  
GUILLERMO SCAGLIA

AbstractA stochastic production frontier approach was used to estimate input distance functions for U.S. grass-fed beef (GFB) production. Average technical efficiencies of 0.84 and 0.79 were found for U.S. GFB whole farms and enterprises, respectively. Producer education level, experience, farm size, annual net farm income from the GFB operation, annual net household income from off-farm sources, and regional differences are the efficiency drivers of U.S. GFB farms. Increasing returns to scale were found for U.S. GFB farms. Our results suggest that U.S. GFB farms can be scale efficient if the optimal size of the operation is greater than approximately 100 GFB animals.


2021 ◽  
pp. 097300522199758
Author(s):  
Raju Mandal ◽  
Shrabanti Maity

The agriculture sector in India is beset with twin limitations of shrinking cultivable area and absence of major technological breakthroughs in the recent past. In such a situation, a judicious management of the farm in the form of adjustment in a crop portfolio can be quite useful to maximise output and minimise wastage of resources. This article seeks to examine whether a diversified crop portfolio makes the farmers more efficient using farm-level survey data collected from geographically diverse areas of Assam, a state in northeast India. The results of a stochastic production frontier analysis show that adoption of a diversified crop portfolio across crops and seasons makes the farmers more efficient in cultivation by helping them reduce weather-induced damages to crops and reap better returns from farming. This efficiency-enhancing effect of crop diversification is found to be heterogeneous among the regions. However, too much diversification reduces the efficiency of farmers. The results have important implications for Assam where floods cause extensive damage to crops every year. Moreover, access to extension services and government support are found to make the farmers more efficient. On the other hand, fixed-rent form of tenancy reduces efficiency of the farmers while household size has a positive impact on the same.


Author(s):  
Richard F. Nehring ◽  
Jeffrey Gillespie ◽  
Catherine Greene ◽  
Jonathan Law

Abstract United States certified organic and conventional dairy farms are compared on the basis of economic, financial, and technological measures using dairy data from the 2016 USDA Agricultural Resource Management Survey. A stochastic production frontier model using an input distance function framework is estimated for U.S. dairy farms to examine technical efficiency and returns to scale (RTS) of farms of both systems and by multiple size categories. Financial and economic measures such as net return on assets and input costs, as well as technological adoption measures are compared by system and size. For both systems, size is the major determinant of competitiveness based on selected measures of productivity and RTS.


Author(s):  
Ryland Lu

This paper addresses academic discourse that critiques urban rail transit projects for their regressive impacts on the poor and proposes bus funding as a more equitable investment for urban transit agencies. The author analyzed data from the 2012 California Household Travel Survey on transit trips in Los Angeles County. The author cross-tabulated data on the modal breakdown of transit trips by household income category and on the breakdown of household income associated with trips by bus and rail transit modes. The author also comparatively evaluated the speed of trips (as a ratio of miles per hour) taken by rail and by bus by low-income households in the county. The author found convincing evidence that, on average, trips low-income households made by rail transit covered a greater distance per hour than trips taken by bus transit, but that trips made on the county’s bus rapid transit services with dedicated rights-of-way had a higher mean speed than those taken by rail. Moreover, the mode and income cross-tabulations indicate that rail transit projects only partially serve low-income households’ travel needs. To the extent that equitable transit planning entails minimizing the disparities in access, both rail and bus rapid transit projects can advance social justice if they are targeted at corridors where they can serve travel demand by low-income, transit dependent households.


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