Abstract

In Ethiopia, technical efficiency studies started about three decades ago. These studies have reached different conclusions regarding agriculture efficiency based on technical efficiency scores. This study represents the first attempt to use meta-analysis to examine the mean technical efficiency estimates in agriculture in Ethiopia. The current study employed 45 frontier studies published from 1993 to 2014 for the meta-analysis. The study employed fractional regression to model for the meta-regression analysis. The result of the study shows that there is no publication bias in technical efficiency studies in Ethiopia. The meta-analysis result shows the overall mean technical efficiencies are 68 and 71% based on fixed effect model and random effect model, respectively, suggesting that there are still opportunities for improvement in the efficiency of Ethiopian agriculture. The result also shows that technical efficiency was found to be decreasing over years for studies carried out in all the four regions together (Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and South). Overall, the study obtained moderator variables (that is, wheat, maize, sample size, food crop, number of inputs) significantly affecting the estimation of the reported mean technical efficiencies in primary studies across the four meta-regression model specifications. The finding of the decline in technical efficiency over years implies that even though there is a scope of improving efficiency in the country, government should also consider side by side introduction and dissemination of new agricultural technologies to reverse the decreasing technical efficiency. This will ultimately boost the country’s agricultural and food production. Besides, the results call upon researchers and academicians to be curious in identifying study-specific attributes, which are essential for modeling farm-level efficiency.

Key words: Meta-analysis, technical efficiency, fixed effect and random effect models.