Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design

Department

Division of Resource Economics & Management

Committee Chair

Levan Elbakidze

Committee Co-Chair

Xiaoli Etienne

Committee Member

Gulnara Zaynutdinova

Committee Member

Peter Schaeffer

Abstract

This dissertation examines production and or technical efficiencies in agricultural and energy systems. The first essay examines production capabilities of smallholder corn farmers following Zimbabwe’s fast track land reform program of 2000. This paper accounts for semi-parametric production frontier to provide more reliable efficiency estimates than can be obtained using traditional parametric methods. The second essay examines efficiency and state level fuel substitution in the US electricity generation sector. I apply the recent fixed effects stochastic frontier estimation to understand the implications of changes in inter-fuel substitution for technical efficiency. The third essay examines the role of drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs) in the US natural gas production. This study considers variations in producing, newly completed and drilled but uncompleted wells to understand the current production of natural gas.

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