Economic efficiency and shadow prices of social and biological outputs of village-level organizations of joint forest management in Gujarat, India

Joint forest management (JFM) has been argued as an optimal institutional arrangement for economic, ecological, and social sustainability, and village-level organizations (production units) are responsible for all the productive activities of JFM. A deterministic output distance function characterizing the production structure of JFM production units, in the Gujarat state of India, is calculated using the production data from 50 village-level organizations and employing a deterministic linear programming technique. The distance function includes economic, biological, and social outputs, and conventional and non-conventional factors. The results are used to calculate the efficiency and relative shadow prices of social and biological outputs of different village-level JFM organizations. Policy and management implications of efficiency and shadow prices are discussed.