Abstract

This paper investigates the patterns of agricultural productivity growth in 16 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries during the period 1970 - 2000. We use a nonparametric, output-based Malmquist index to examine whether our estimates confirm or invalidate the previous studies results indicating the decrease of agricultural productivity in developing countries. We will show that on average, agricultural productivity growth increased at an annual rate of 1% during the whole period. Our estimations show that technical change is the main source for this growth. Those results weaken as a whole the findings of the other studies, however we find a decrease in agricultural productivity mainly for developing countries suffering from political conflicts and wars. This paper fills the void of hardly any agricultural studies on MENA countries collectively, especially on productivity trends.

Key words: Agricultural productivity growth, MENA region, Malmquist productivity index.