Title : Measuring the Effect of Agricultural Extension on Technical Efficiency in Crop Farming: Meta-Regression Analysis
Author(s) : Nicolas Lampach, Phu Nguyen-Van, Nguyen To-The
Abstract : Agricultural extension services have been dominated by development programs to improve the productivity of crops and to increase farmers’ income. The virtues and limitations of these programs ignite a debate among scholars from distinct strands of research. How effective are agricultural extension services in improving the productivity level of the agricultural output? We examine the key determinants driving systematic variations in the obtained technical efficiency estimates from all relevant crop farming studies. A weighted least square meta-regression analysis is conducted by using 193 observations from 96 farm level studies to evaluate the estimates of technical efficiency in crop farming and to review the relationship between agricultural extension services and farm performance. Evidence for the absence of a publication bias in the farm studies used in the meta-analysis is identified. The empirical results manifest that there is a positive and significant effect of extension services on technical efficiency estimates. Farm productivity is significantly influenced by country level characteristics, sample size of farm studies and type of crops. Our empirical findings are robust when replacing missing observations with imputed values applying the multiple imputation method.
Key-words : Agricultural extension; Crop farming; Meta-analysis; Multiple Imputation; Publication bias; Technical efficiency; Weighted Least Square Estimation.
JEL Classification : Q16, O18, C14, C29
