The damage-control effect of pesticides on total factor productivity growth

Abstract

This paper develops a framework for analysing the sources of total factor productivity (TFP) changes by explicitly taking into account the damage-control nature of pesticides. In the proposed framework, TFP changes are attributed to the conventional sources of growth (i.e. technical change, scale effect and changes in technical efficiency) and the damage-control effect which consists of three distinct components: the first one is due to changes in the initial pest infestation, the second is a spillover effect arising from neighbours' use of preventive inputs and the third is related to abatement effectiveness. The proposed model is applied to a panel of olive-growing farms in Crete, Greece, during the period 1999–2003. The empirical results indicate that the damage-control effect accounted, on average, for 5 per cent of the annual TFP growth and its main component was the improvements in abatement effectiveness. , Oxford University Press.