A comparative study of production factors and productivity for shrimp farms in three Asian countries: Bangladesh, India and Indonesia

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparative index characterization of shrimp production in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia. We approach the problem using a profit decomposition procedure to identify the separate effects of prices, pond size and productivity on the profits of individual farms. This profit decomposition approach relies on application of the Törnqvist index in measurement. Data are made available by the WorldFish Centre, Malaysia. The data represent production, pond area, unit price of output and inputs and corresponding quantities. The results show that pond size is important not only because we observe a strong positive relationship with profits but that the results are suggestive of important scale effects in production. These results indicate that small farms in all three countries are disadvantaged not because they are unproductive or lack the skills to manage but rather that many farms are too small to achieve economic potential.