Total factor productivity growth in China’s corn farming: an application of generalized productivity indicator

Abstract

Total factor productivity (TFP) growth measures usually focus on a certain direction of optimization and ignore the general setting encompassing the input and output orientations simultaneously. This paper uses the generalized Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen (LHM) TFP indicator which is additively complete and can be decomposed by three mutually exclusive elements. The input- and output-oriented analysis is undertaken in order to derive the generalized TFP measured. The paper uses the corn production data from 19 Chinese provinces over the period of 2004–2017. This research is important as China is the second largest corn producer in the world. The TFP growth was observed for Chinese corn farming the rate of 0.56% per year. The technological progress (0.48%) was the major source of the TFP growth, whereas the importance of the technical efficiency change (0.09%) and scale efficiency change (–0.01%) was negligible.

Keywords

• corn production
• total factor productivity
• luenberger-hicks-moorsteen indicator
• data envelopment analysis
• efficiency change
• technological progress