Production Efficiency in Small Agriculture: Do Migrant Remittances Matter? Evidence from Rural Nigeria

Abstract

This paper investigates how remittances ow to Nigeria from household migrants correlate with farm production efficiency of the left behind in rural areas using the Living Standard Measurement Survey data set. We applied the production frontier model from which efficiency scores for two groups of farmers were recovered: migrant households and non-migrant households. We subjected the efficiency scores to Anova and stochastic dominance analyses. Mean production efficiency for migrant households was significantly higher at p < 0:05. Across all percentiles, migrant households had higher technical efficiency level compared to households without migrants. Thus rejecting the hypothesis of negative production efficiency effect of migrant remittances ow to farm households. While policy programmes should promote labour mobility and remittances, it supposes a complementary policy that promote labour saving farm technologies