Measuring agricultural productivity growth in mena countries

Abstract EN

This paper investigates the patterns of agricultural productivity growth in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries during the period 1970–2000.

We use a nonparametric, output-based Malmquist index to examine whether our estimates confirm or invalidate the results of previous studies indicating the decline of agricultural productivity in developing countries.

We will show that, on average, agricultural productivity growth has increased at an annual rate of 1 percent during the whole period.

Our estimations show that technical change is the main source for this growth.

Those results generally weaken the finding of the other studies.

Nonetheless, we find a reduction in agriculture productivity mainly in developing countries suffering from political conflicts and wars.