中美洲農業部門效率與生產力變化

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the main sources of agricultural growth for Central America (C.A.) between 1979 and 2014 using data for six countries of the region. Two analytical methods are used. The first method is data envelope analysis (DEA), which is a non-parametric estimation. The second one applies a parametric function by using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) which also includes “exogenous variables”. The results from DEA indicate that agricultural growth in countries of C.A. is driven by technical change (TC) rather than efficiency change (EC). The results from SFA suggest that just upper-middle income (UM) economies are driven by TC (or frontier shift) while lower-middle income (LM) economies in C.A. are mostly driven by EC (or catch-up). The empirical results from the exogenous variables also suggest that the more the use of irrigation, human capital, and specialization of crops, the more efficient a country’s agricultural sector becomes.