This study estimates nonparametric non-stochastic Malmquist indices and a stochastic Fourier production frontier to examine agricultural productivity and its interactions with socio-political institutions in 41 sub-Saharan African countries during 1961-1999. We have learned from this study that...

This paper specifies an empirical model of the relative decline of the agricultural sector consistent with the neoclassical explanation. We utilize a production theory approach to analyze the effect of changes in relative prices, relative factor endowments and technical change on the share of...

A three period overlapping generations model is developed to investigate the impact of shorter life expectancy due to disease, on human capital investment decisions and income growth. This research is particularly relevant to Sub-Saharan Africa given the dramatic reduction in life expectancy due...

Competitiveness in commodity markets is associated with a shift in the marginal cost as represented by Griliches k-shift. A distance function is used to estimate this shift as a combination of the rate an bias of technological change in the markets for corn, soybenas, wheat, and beef in U.S...

This paper examines changes in agricultural productivity in 18 developing countries over the period 1961 to 1985. Because input price series are not available, we use the concept of distance function and the nonparametric, quantity-based Malmquist index approach, and contrast the results with...

Agricultural productivity in 41 Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries from 1960 to 1999 is examined by estimating a semi-nonparametric Fourier production frontier. Over the four decades the estimated rate of productivity change was 0.83% per year, although the average rate from 1985-99 was a strong...

In this paper we propose an empirical model to decompose the evolution of the agricultural GDP share of Taiwan into three components: price changes, factor endowment changes and technological change. The full sample period is 1967 to 1997. The data were first tested to assess whether the time...