Author : Nguyen Tuan Son

Summary : The study aimed to determine the supply response of hogs in both backyard and commercial farms, the returns to size and private profitability for different scales of swine production, and the demand for pork in different income levels high-income classes and locations (i.e. rural and urban areas) in North Vietnam. The restricted profit function in transcendental logarithmic form was used to estimate the revenue and cost share equations for different outputs and inputs in both backyard and commercial farms. The returns to size were computed based on the formula devised by Weaver and through the estimated coefficients from revenue and cost share equations. in the supply response function estimation tests for backyard farms, the results showed that own-price coefficients were in general statistically different from zero for all scales of production. Own-price elasticities had signs which were consistent with the implication of profit maximization. These results provided strong support for the hypothesized responsiveness of output supply and derived demand for inputs to price changes within the production period. The cross-price coefficients were also significantly different from zero for all scales of production. For the commercial farms, the study showed that strong complementary relationship existed between the two outputs, piglets and finished pigs. The derived demands for major inputs were highly own-price elastic.