Estimating the Stochastic Frontier Production Function for Tilapia Farms in Taiwan Using Pooled Data

• Main Authors: Yen-Te Wu, 吳彥德
• Other Authors: Fu-Sung Chiang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/18411195908413853463

碩士 === 國立臺灣海洋大學 === 應用經濟研究所 === 97 === According to Taiwan’s Fisheries Yearbook, in term of production and export, Tilapia ranks first among all species in Taiwan’s aquaculture industry. The production was 76,097 metric tons in 2007 with export exceeding all other species in Taiwan’s aquaculture industry. It is the only fishery product chosen by the Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture as one of the four flagship agricultural exports. Clearly, Tilapia is very important for Taiwan. This thesis makes use of the concept of production frontier suggested by Farrell (1957) in estimating the stochastic production frontier by FRONTIER VERSION 4.1 to analyze technical efficiency of Tilapia aquaculture and the impact of factors affecting technical efficiency on output. We determine output boundary function and the model of inefficiency as the basis for analyzing all tilapia farms. Further, this research compares technological inefficiency over various years, and estimates the value of technology inefficiency of individual farms and their spatial distribution as the basis for making suggestions to increase the value of tilapia output value. We use an integrated data over seven years in our research. In comparison with previous studies, which are based on data of a single year, we are able to study Taiwan’s tilapia industry from a broader perspective. Our result shows that translog function gives the best fits. The value for returns to scale is 1.01, indicating constant returns to scale. Technical efficiency value using translog function is 0.847 and the production error is approximately 91.7%, coming from the personal error factor. Mono-culture/poly-culture, operation scale, farming experience and the year difference all affect the technical efficiency significantly. In addition, we estimate the maximum expected output after the breeding farms overcomes the factors of technical inefficiency, allowing a more effective utilization of resources and reducing unnecessary expense. Our result may provide fishery authorities or related fishery association useful references for promoting production efficiency and achieving future production target in fish farms. Therefore, fish farms or types of aquaculture that are more efficient may be examples for the less efficient fish farms to imitate. This will be the direction for Taiwan’s aquaculture industry to improve in the future and in particular for the tilapia industry to strengthen its overall competitiveness and to promote Taiwan’s competitive advantage in the international market.