Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: RAYSSA DA VEIGA STOFELES LOBO

IMPACT OF PRONAF ON THE TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY OF BRAZILIAN FAMILY FARMING: AN APPROACH VIA SPATIAL ECONOMETRY AND STOCHASTIC FRONTIER

Family Farming, PRONAF, Technical Efficiency, Stochastic Frontier, Spatial Econometrics.

In Brazil, agribusiness plays a significant role in the country's economic development, being a global leader in the production of various agricultural products. However, there is a high level of income inequality, particularly affecting family farming, which hampers its productive performance. A vast body of literature identifies Pronaf as a mechanism capable of improving productive performance, as this credit provides family farmers with access to technologies and innovation, infrastructure improvements, technical training, and, consequently, offers the potential for farmers to increase their technical efficiency. In this context, the present study aims to analyze the effect of Pronaf on the technical efficiency of family farming in Brazil, considering the existence of spatial dependence effects in the variables. To this end, an Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) will first be conducted. Then, to obtain technical efficiency scores, the stochastic production frontier method will be employed, incorporating spatial dependence into the model, allowing the spatial lags of the exogenous variables to alter the production frontier technology. Finally, to assess the effect of Pronaf on the technical efficiency of Brazilian family farming establishments, an econometric regression will be carried out using the model that proves to be the most robust and appropriate for the data.