Assessing Agricultural Malmquist Total Factor Productivity and Environmental Efficiency for Some Arab Countries Via Data Envelope Analysis (A Non Parametric Approach) تقدير مؤشر مالمکويست للإنتاجية الکلية للعوامل الزراعية و الکفاءة البيئية لبعض الدول العربية مستخدماً طريقة مغلف البيانات: المنهج الا معلمى

Abstract

The paper aims to assess the relative efficiency of agriculture and agricultural growth change in productivity, as well as, environmental efficiency over the past decade (2007-2017) for ten of the largest Arab agricultural producers. Namely are Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Syria, Morocco, Yemen, Tunisia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. The analysis employs data envelope analysis (DEA) a nonparametric approach employing non- radial and non-oriented slacks-based model (SBM) based on the assumption of a constant return to scale with the consideration of agricultural greenhouse gases emissions (CO2-eq) as an undesirable (bad) output. Moreover, it adopts Malmquist technique to estimate TFP index numbers. Technical efficiency results show that excluding agricultural emissions from consideration leads to overestimated scores and thus spurious estimates. TFP results show that average annual growth rate throughout the period 2007-2017 reached -0.12% in general. Efficiency changes attributed by a mere -0.49% while the rest (0.37%) was contributed by technical change. Moreover, the countries with the highest average annual growth in TFP are Syria and Morocco with an impressive 6% each on average, while for Yemen and Algeria about 3.5% (on average), Sudan and Saudi Arabia 0.6% (on average). Whereas, Tunisia achieved the least negative score estimated at -0.3%, Egypt and United Emirates about -2.4% (on average) and Iraq (-15%).