ABSTRACT

Asia, 1965, esp. pp. 158-162; E. Dean, Supply Response o f A frican F anners, North-Holland, 1966, esp. pp. 74-79.16 M. Lipton, * Should Reasonable Farmers Respond to Price Changes?*, Jo urn al o f M odem A sian Studies, 1966.26 Henderson and Quandt, M icro-economic Theory, McGraw-Hill, 1958, pp. 64-6. Hopper’s production functions (loc. c it., J n l. Farm . E con., 1966, p. 615) are of less than first degree — they exhibit decreasing return to scale. Thus if all factors are paid their MVPs, some of the value of the total product is unaccounted for — as much as 19 per cent in the case of gram. In other words, profit maximisation is incompatible with product exhaustion. This is why the ‘implicit prices’ calculated by Hopper are above market prices for the factors of production in Senapur, but below them for the products (ib id ., p. 621).27 Private communication from Professor Schultz, relating to Punjab. See also Studies in Economics o f Farm M anagem ent in Bombay: 1954-5 to 1956-7 , Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Delhi, 1962, pp. 86, 88.28 ‘Panorama’, B.B.G. Television, 1965.