Asian Agricultural Productivity and Convergence

This paper measures agricultural total factor productivity (TFP), for eighteen Asian countries, from 1965 to 1996. TFP is measured by calculating the Malmquist index with respect to the sequential frontier, which is appropriate when the cross section is relatively small. The results show that half the countries have experienced negative productivity growth, due to losses in technical efficiency combined with stagnation in technological progress. Both cross‐section and time series tests show that there is no evidence of convergence in agricultural productivity for these countries. The less productive countries are falling further behind, rather than catching up. Finally, comparisons with Africa show that although Asia has had faster TFP growth than Africa, three of the five African regions (East, Central and Southern) have grown faster than any of the Asian regions.