Agricultural productivity and convergence: Europe and the United States

Anthony Rezitis

Applied Economics, 2010, vol. 42, issue 8, 1029-1044

Abstract: This article applies the Window Malmquist Index (WMI) approach to measure changes in agricultural Total Factor Productivity (TFP) for the United States and a sample of nine European countries for the period 1973 to 1993. The dataset used in this article is obtained from Ball et al. (2001). The WMI is constructed by combining Data Envelopment Analysis, window analysis with the Malmquist index approach. Furthermore, the 'Kruskal and Wallis rank test' is used for testing frontier shifts among observed periods. The article also explores the question of convergence in TFP across the countries under consideration, by testing for β- and σ-convergence, as well as for stochastic or long-run convergence. The results show wide variation in the rate of TFP growth across countries with an average trend growth rate of 1.62%. The results indicate the presence of β-convergence but the absence of σ-convergence for the full period under consideration but the presence of both β- and σ-convergence for the sub-period 1983 to 1993. Finally, a wide spectrum of panel unit root test results support the presence of long-run convergence among the sample countries.

Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840701721026 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:42:y:2010:i:8:p:1029-1044

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036840701721026

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().