This paper briefly presents the results of a total factor productivity (TFP) study of South African commercial agriculture, for 1947-1997, and illustrates some potential pitfalls in rate of return to research (ROR) calculations. The lag between R&D and TFP is analyzed and found to be only 9...

A new panel data test for Granger causality is presented that can be applied to panels with more time series observations than cross-sections. Inconsistency in these models with lagged dependent variables and fixed effects is avoided by differencing and pooling the data. The joint significance...

This chapter extends the work of the previous chapters by fitting a long run profit function to investigate the sources of output growth in South African agriculture. In the long run, all the conventional inputs are treated as variable, but the technology-related variables are fixed because they...

This paper briefly presents the results of a total factor productivity (TFP) study of South African commercial agriculture, for 1947-1997, and illustrates some potential pitfalls in rate of return to research (ROR) calculations. The lag between R&D and TFP is analyzed and found to be only 9...

An error correction model (ECM) of induced innovation, based on the two-stage CES production function allows direct tests of the inducement hypothesis, which are applied to U.S. data for 1880-1990. The time series properties of the variables include a structural break in 1920, cointegration is...

Subsidised energy prices in pre-transition Hungary had led to excessive energy intensity in the agricultural sector. Transition has resulted in steep input price increases. In this study, Allen and Morishima elasticities of substitution are estimated to study the effects of these price changes...

This paper is a summary of the behaviour of food commodity prices in 2007-8 and a review of the causes of the price increases. The historical background shows that the price spike was much less severe than in the 1970s. The conventional wisdom that prices of the main food commodities were...

Twenty percent of the world population, or 1.2 billion live on less than $1 per day; 70% of these are rural and 90% in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Research led technological change in agriculture generates sufficient productivity growth to give high rates of return in Africa and Asia and has a...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to use the DuPont expansion to examine those factors underlying differences in (rates of) return on different crop portfolios over space (ten regions) and time (1960-2004). The paper also estimates the impact of government payments on farmland values...

We build up from the plant level an “aggregate(d)” Solow residual by estimating every U.S. manufacturing plant's contribution to the change in aggregate final demand between 1976 and 1996. Our framework uses the Petrin and Levinsohn (2010) definition of aggregate productivity growth, which...