日治時期台灣蔗作農場技術效率之分析

Technical Efficiency for Sugarcane Production in Taiwan: Empirical Evidence during Japanese Colonial Period

日治時期日本政府全力投入台灣糖業發展，使糖業成為日治時期最具代表性之產業，而甘蔗是製糖原料，因此，台灣糖業就是甘蔗農業。本研究以隨機邊界模型估計1926－1928年台灣蔗作農場生產函數與技術效率，並探討其決定因素為何。實證結果發現Translog生產函數較適合作為研究期間蔗作農場之邊界生產函數，投入要素以肥料為影響生產的主要因素，而蔗作農場呈現固定規模報酬現象，農場平均技術效率約為69％左右。另外，經營者屬性、灌溉系統與自給勞動率等因素皆對技術效率造成影響，其中自耕農技術效率高於佃農，灌溉系統較方便的農場對效率之提升有所助益。 After Taiwan became the first colony of Japan, the colonial government made efforts to improve sugarcane cultivation and to promote the productivity of the sugar industry. This paper applies the stochastic frontier production model to estimate the technical efficiency of sugarcane production and attempts to examine the determinants of technical efficiency during the Japanese colonial period, from 1926 to 1928. The empirical results indicate that the sugarcane farms with constant return of scale fits better with the Translog function, and fertilizer is a major determinant in sugarcane production. The technical efficiencies for the farmers range from 0.21 to 0.94, with a mean of 0.69. Also, factors that make significant impacts on the production efficiency are land tenure systems, regional differences, irrigation systems, cultivation periods, cropping distance and the ratio of family labors to total labors.