한국 쌀 농가의 기술 효율성 분석 - 완전효율을 고려한 확률 경계모형을 중심으로

An Analysis on Production Efficiency of Korean Rice Farms: A Zero Inefficiency Stochastic Frontier Approach

This study investigates technical inefficiencies and economies of scale of rice cultivation in South Korea, providing an empirical evidence for governmental interventions. We adopted a zero inefficiency stochastic frontier (ZISF) approach, which allows for both zero- inefficient and fully inefficient regimes. The probability of zero-inefficiency was estimated to be 0.988. Taking into account the probability of being fully inefficient (   ), the estimate of technical inefficiency is about 1 percent, which means that S. Korean rice farmers are highly efficient in terms of resource allocation. In addition, the average scale efficiency is 0.8952, exhibiting economies of scale. Cost savings from scale-up are found to be much bigger in the smaller farmers, implying that farmland scale-up projects targeting beginning farmers, who tend to operate a small-scale farm, would increase their settle down rates by bigger increase in profits.