Metafrontier production and technical efficiency of shrimp farming in the States of Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte

Abstract In the Northeast of Brazil, the shrimp farming has achieved high level of technical efficiency; however, these advances have not happened homogenously among producing states. This study aims to analyze the technological differences of shrimp production occurring among the two major producer states of this commodity, Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte, 2011. In order to perform this, we applied the technological meta-frontier model proposed by Battese, Rao and O’Donnell, which aims to estimate an envelope function of the production stochastic frontier of the two states. Production and management data were extracted from the 2011 Shrimp Farming Census, conducted by the Brazilian Association of Shrimp Farming (ABCC), constituted of 100 farms in Ceará and 112 in Rio Grande do Norte. The results showed that, in average terms, Ceará was more technically efficient (ET) than Rio Grande do Norte, and theaverage area of ponds had higher impact over Ceará’s ET, while the number of hired workers had higher impact over Rio Grande do Norte’s ET.