An alternative meta-production function for agriculture is estimated with the cross-section data for 43 countries and three years (1960, 1970 and 1980) constructed and used by Kawagoe, Hayami and Ruttan and Hayami and Ruttan in their studies.
By allowing for country-specific efftciency factors and using a flexible functional form - the transcendental logarithmic production function - strikingly different results from those of Kawagoe, Hayami and Ruttan are obtained.