The Changing Trend and Regional Differences of China Agricultural Total Factor Productivity:Based on 1978-2008 Malmquist Index Analysis

This paper,using 1978-2008 provincial panel data and applying the Malmquist productivity index model parameters,measures the change index of China agricultural total factor productivity and analyses the time and space differences of TFP.The results show that: the agricultural TFP growth of the whole nation,three regions and most provinces belongs to the type of growth of technical progress;the agricultural TFP growth of the whole nation and the three regions obviously reflects fluctuation characteristic;the TFP growth also shows a significant regional and provincial imbalance;the decrease of agricultural technical efficiency restricts the growth of TFP of the whole nation and the three regions;and the decrease of agricultural technology efficiency is the result of joint work between loss of pure technical efficiency and the drop of scale efficiency.