Measuring and decomposing total productivity growth of sugar beet production factors in Iran

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to estimate the rate of growth of total productivity factors in sugar beet production for different provinces and the decomposition of productivity growth rate into technological changes, changes in management efficiency and scale efficiency changes components. The method used to measure the total productivity growth of production factors and its components, was the Malmquist productivity index, in which the Data Envelopment Analysis method is used for the measurement of distance functions. The results showed that the total productivity of sugar beet production factors between the years 2000 and 2007 have grown by nearly 47%. Comparison among all sugar beet production factors throughout the study period showed that in three provinces of Ghazvin, Markazi and Hamedan, the productivity situation has been worsened and the main reason was the lack of management efficiency in these provinces. Therefore, these provinces are suggested to consider successful provinces in produc-tivity of production status as their models to improve their productivity.

Keywords

• iran
• malmquist index
• productivity growth
• sugar beet
• total factors productivity