Factor Productivity in the Argentinean Agriculture

Abstract

This paper is aimed at investigating the endogeneity of the total factor productivity in the Argentinean agriculture. In a simple model ofendogenous technological change, the implementation of new techniques of production would depend upon sectoral relative prices, and upon the overall endowment of capital and land relative to labor. It is found that the estimations using data covering the years 1939-1984 do not reject the hypothesis of endogeneity of technological change as a function of the aforementioned variables. It is also found that the fiscal deficit negatively affects the implementation of new techniques. The coefficient of labor in the value added of the agricultural sector (cereals and oilseeds, livestock and fisheries) is 0.28 according to the estimates of the 1973 input-output matrix data, a value that is very close to the estimate used in this paper.

Keywords

• total factor productivity
• available and implemented technologies
• cointegrated vector autoregression
• Barttlet correction
• eigenvalues