The objective of my research is to contribute toward efficiency- and productivity-enhancing policies by estimating the magnitude of gains from the more effective use of water in agriculture. With water touching practically every economic activity, modelling the economic impact of transition to efficiency-enhancing irrigation technologies in the farm-level, while accounting for climate variability and environmental resilience, is a critical area of research.

 

My job market paper uses an improved stochastic production frontier approach corrected for sample selectivity to measure technical efficiency within a modern irrigation technology transition framework.  When selection bias is present and the model is not correcting for it, this can lead to biased frontier measures and therefore can generate biased efficiency scores.  

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Job Market Paper

Impact Evaluation of New Irrigation Technology in Crete: Correcting for Selectivity Bias.

The interest in promoting food and water security through development projects has led to the need for tools that can evaluate the impact of these projects and ensure that the projects reach the most vulnerable and enhance the quality of life for the members of the community (Gertler et al., 2011). This study brings together the stochastic frontier model with impact evaluation methodology to measure farmers’ technical effi- ciency within a modern irrigation technology transition framework. Deciding to adopt or not an alternative irrigation technology (sprinklers) is not necessarily a random determination. Unobserved heterogeneity across the farms in the sample has an im- pact on the farmer’s decision to adopt the new technology. Therefore, selection bias can be present, and when the model is not correcting for it this can lead to biased producttion frontier estimates and generate biased technical efficiency scores. In this study, we apply both Heckman (1979) and Greene (2010) specifications to correct for self-selectivity biases, and then we measure and compare technical efficiency scores re- sulting from these models. The empirical application uses data covering 56 small-scale greenhouse farms, cultivating vegetables, from the Ierapetra Valley in the Southeast part of the island of Crete (Greece) for the cropping years from 2009 to 2013. The results reveal that the average technical efficiency for farmers who adopted sprinkler irrigation is lower than the group of non-adopters when the presence of selectivity bias cannot be rejected. This outcome can be explained by the fact that after the adoption of new technologies, farmers may need more time to incorporate the know how of the newly acquired technology in the production process. 

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Work in Progress

"Agricultural Water Productivity under Spatial Adjustments" Available here.

 (with S. E. Stefanou and K. A. Grogan).  Target journal: American Journal of Agricultural Economics

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"Theoretical Framework for REDD+ Payments based on the Extension of Rotation Length in Forest Plantations" Available here.

 (with Thales A. P. West, Chris Wilson, Kelly A. Grogan).  Target journal: Forest Policy and Economics

 

"A Nonlinear Dynamic Approach for Assessing Water Table Response to Evapotranspiration Changes and Rainfall Events" (with R. Huffaker and K. Migliaccio).  Target journal: Agricultural Systems

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