- Impacts of Total Factor Productivity on Agricultural Growth in Pacific Island Countries
- Genetic Loss in Food Crops in the Pacific: Socio-Economics Causes and Policy Issues
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- Hayden White and the Burden of History
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- Australia – A Hegemonic Power in the Pacific Region
- The Magnus Effect and the Flettner Rotor: Potential Application for Future Oceanic Shipping
- Irrigated ethnoagriculture, adaptation and development: a Pacific case study
- Impacts of Total Factor Productivity on Agricultural Growth in Pacific Island Countries
- Genetic Loss in Food Crops in the Pacific: Socio-Economics Causes and Policy Issues
- An insight into public sector readiness for change – the Fiji Experience
- Regulations, Costs and Informality: The Case of Fiji
- The effectiveness of the destination websites in promoting linkages between visitors and the community in Tonga
- Hayden White and the Burden of History
- A comparative study of stress amongst teachers of the western division in Fiji
- Australia – A Hegemonic Power in the Pacific Region
- The Magnus Effect and the Flettner Rotor: Potential Application for Future Oceanic Shipping
- Irrigated ethnoagriculture, adaptation and development: a Pacific case study
Impacts of Total Factor Productivity on Agricultural Growth in Pacific Island Countries
Authors: Hong Chen, Biman Chand Prasad and Baljeet Singh
Abstract
The agriculture sector plays an important role in small Pacific Island economies and has significant impacts on the livelihood of households. However, total agricultural production and productivity in these economies are generally low. This, together with limited sources of factor inputs, calls for improving technical efficiency and technology to enhance agriculture production. Based on the Malmquist index approach, this study computes growth of total factor productivity and its components, namely, pure technical efficiency growth, scale efficiency growth and technological growth for the agriculture sector of 15 Pacific Island countries over 1980-2012. Impacts of these productivity growth measures are further quantified by estimating panel data regression models using the generalized method of moments estimators. There is sufficient statistical evidence that agriculture’s total factor productivity growth and its components, which though are slow in Pacific Island countries, contribute significantly to these small economies’ agricultural growth.
Keywords: Agriculture, productivity, growth