A FAMILY OF AGRONOMIC PRODUCTION FUNCTIONS WITH ECONOMIES OF SCOPE

Abstract

This paper derives a family of multiple‐output multiple‐input production functions from the underlying technologies. These technologies are represented by average yield functions for each of the commodities (crops) produced from a common pool of resources. The production functions are implicitly separable. Examples include the CRETH, translog, generalised power and generalised McFadden functions. Moreover, given a function which is a member of this family, the individual commodity yield and production functions can be recovered. Such implicitly separable multiple‐output production functions may exhibit economies or diseconomies of scope which reflect the interactions between outputs sharing ..