"Using district-level data on public expenditures from 2000 to 2006, and household-level production data from the 2005/06 Ghana Living Standards Survey, this paper estimates the returns to different types of public investments across four agro-ecological zones of Ghana. We then assess the amount of public agricultural expenditures required to raise agricultural growth to 6.9 percent per year until 2015, as this is the target growth needed for Ghana to achieve its goal of middle-income status. The results reveal that provision of various public goods and services has substantial impact on agricultural productivity. A one percent increase in public spending on agriculture is associated with a 0.15 percent increase in agricultural labor productivity, with a benefit-cost ratio of 16.8. Spending on feeder roads ranks second (with a benefit-cost ratio of 8.8), followed by health (1.3). Formal education was negatively associated with agricultural productivity. The estimated marginal effects and returns differ across the four agro-ecological zones. For Ghana to achieve middle income status by 2015, agricultural public spending should grow at an estimated rate of 19.6 percent per year, or by a total amount of GH¢264 million (or US$478 million) per year in 2000 prices over the 2005–2015 period. These requirements are lower if the government is able to achieve a higher efficiency in its public spending than the estimated elasticity of 0.15; this could potentially be achieved by reforming public institutions to improve the provision of agriculture-related public goods and services." from authors' abstract
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in its series IFPRI discussion papers with number
811.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)