Examining Cross-Country Agricultural Productivity Differences

This paper computes Malmquist agricultural productivity indexes for 125 countries over the period 1961-2001. These are decomposed into efficiency change (i.e., pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency changes) and technical change (i.e., input bias and magnitude components). Results show that developing and developed countries derive their growth from efficiency change and technical change, respectively. Input bias technical change is evident for both developing and developed countries.