Agricultural productivity growth in traditional and transitional economies in Asia

Abstract

This paper reports estimates of agricultural productivity growth in Asian countries, with special attention to the transition economies. A parametric output distance function approach is formulated to decompose total factor productivity (TFP) growth into its associated components and to examine how input and output intensities shift in response to the adoption of innovations. The results show that by including the transition economies, Asia achieved healthy TFP growth at an annual average rate of 1.9 per cent. However, TFP growth and its components differ widely across the transition countries and at different stages of the transition periods within these countries.