Agricultural Competitiveness: The Case of the United States and Major EU Countries

Munisamy Gopinath, Carlos Arnade, Mathew Shane and Terry Roe

No 278811, Staff Reports from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: Growth in the agricultural GDP of four major European countries is compared with U.S. agricultural growth for the period 1974-1993. The agricultural sector's domestic terms of trade with the rest of the economy is taken into account along with economy-wide factor market adjustments. For all the four countries— Denmark, France, Germany, and the U.K.— the effects of declining real prices and changes in input levels on growth in agricultural GDP are relatively small on average. Total Factor Productivity (TFP) appears to be the major contributor to European agricultural GDP growth. TFP is the major source of growth in U.S. and EU agricultural GDP, but its rate of growth in the United States is lower than the European countries for the same period. The declining real prices for U.S. agriculture had a large effect on its GDP as compared with the EU. However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the effects of declining real prices and declining rates of growth in TFP on European agriculture were relatively large. In the longer run, the relative competitiveness of U.S. agriculture is largely dependent on its ability to sustain and increase growth in TFP.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Productivity Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 1996-09
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Agricultural competitiveness: The case of the United States and major EU countries (1997)
Journal Article: Agricultural competitiveness: The case of the United States and major EU countries (1997)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uerssr:278811

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.278811

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