Estimating Efficiency Effects with a Copula-based Spatial Panel Stochastic Frontier Model: Application in Thai rice Production

The study aims to investigate Thai rice production efficiency with a spatial panel stochastic frontier model based on copula to draft general statistical data for purpose of Thai agriculture development in the future. The empirical results show that land and labor have an indisputably positive and significant effect on rice production. The SFM with Clayton copula has the lowest value regarding BIC. The best average TE score belongs to the central region followed by the northern region, the north-eastern region, and the southern region with their average scores of 0.951, 0.949, 0.944, and 0.941, respectively. The interesting point is that, the largest gap between the highest and the lowest scores provinces lie within central region which has the highest efficiency score, then, followed by northeastern, the northern, and southern regions with their gap values of 0.078, 0.076, 0.074 and 0.051, respectively.