Total agricultural productivity in the Mediterranean region using the Malmquist index approach

Abstract

This study aims to measure the total productivity of agricultural production factors through the calculation of the Malmquist index for six Mediterranean countries during the period 2003-2018. The results indicate that the growth of agricultural productivity in the Mediterranean region during this period by the calculation of the Malmquist index recorded an increase of 13.2%. Much of this productivity growth is driven by technological change rather than a change in technical efficiency or scale. In fact, the technology change increased by 13%, while the technical efficiency change showed a slight increase of 0.2% due to the scale efficiency change of the same percentage. It should be noted that the total productivity of agricultural production factors and the contribution of technical change and scale efficiency have the same trend at the subregional level, but are different at the country level. These results show that the total productivity of agricultural production factors is highly variable between Mediterranean countries and that the overall efficiency gains obtained are largely due to the phenomenon of technological catch-up rather than to gains in scale or efficiency pure.