Reduced U.S. Funding of Public Agricultural Research and Extension Risks Lowering Future Agricultural Productivity Growth Prospects

Yu Jin and Wallace Huffman

Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to provide policymakers with new estimates of the separate returns to public agricultural research and extension and a perspective on future agricultural productivity growth. This requires fitting an econometric model that contains separate regressors for the stock of public agricultural research and public agricultural extension. We use net measures to create our public agricultural research and extension variables. Our model is fitted to data for the U.S. contiguous 48 states, 1970-2004. It yields statistically significant estimates of within-state and spillin stocks of public agricultural research and of within-state agricultural extension. The econometric model of state agricultural TFP yields somewhat optimistic forecasts for agricultural total factor productivity over 2004-2010. The social rate of return to public investments in agricultural research and extension are shown to remain large—both are in excess of 60 percent, which is large by any standard.

Keywords: states; agriculture; returns to research; multifactor productivity; U.S.; forecasts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-12-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-eff
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Reduced U.S. funding of public agricultural research and extension risks lowering future agricultural productivity growth prospects (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:36796

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