Regional Brazilian Agriculture TFP Analysis: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis Approach

This paper estimated the total factor productivity (TFP) for the Brazilian agriculture using a translog panel data estimation. The major motivation is to investigate the evolution of the agricultural TFP over the period 1975-2006 in Brazilian states, and to analyze the effects of TFP on regional economic growth. The TFP effect was subdivided in technical progress, allocative changes, scale effects, technical inefficiency and random shocks. The conclusions suggest that over the last decades the TFP growth was not homogeneous among the states, and the technical progress was fundamental to expand the potential economic growth of Brazilian Agriculture at state level.