Estimating the supply elasticity of cotton in Mali with the Nerlove Model: A bayesian method of moments approach

Mali is among the first cotton growers in Africa. Since the early nineties, it has been reforming its cotton sector by means of different policy measures. In this paper, we estimate the supply elasticity of cotton in order to have a precise idea about how producers react to price changes and what are the potential bottlenecks. Contrary to all the previous studies which fail to consistently estimate the long run elasticity of supply, we apply the Bayesian method of moments, following Zellner’s (1978) Minimum Expected Loss Estimators (MELO) approach. A key finding is that output supply elasticity is low in the short run due to structural constraints and high in the long run.