Toward a better understanding of farm business viability: Essays on production benchmark performance and capital structure choice

This dissertation explores farm business viability by examining the nexus between the capital structure choices and productive performance. Through application to a survey of Western Australian broadacre mixed-enterprise farms, the research investigates farm business capital structure choice and adjustment speed; the use of TFP efficiency as a more complete benchmark of productive performance as opposed to orientation-restricted technical efficiency measures; and the impact of including debt repayment obligations as a by-product of input use on partial inefficiency estimates. The overall implication of this study is that adoption of more complete performance benchmarks can improve policy insights and outcomes.