Induced Technological, Institutional Innovation And Philippine Agricultural Development In Post-War Era

After gaining independence at the end of World War II, the Philippines achieved high growth in its agricultural sector before 1980s, which should be attributed to the rapid economic development in the beginning of independence, as well as the Green Revolution that began in the late 1960s. Unfortunately, Philippine agriculture was suffering from disastrous decline after 1980, which could be described as a weak follow-up. This thesis is going to study this phenomenon, in the view of inputs of technical as well as relevant institutional factors.Based on the theoretical framework of induced innovation, my study first investigates the direction of Philippine agricultural technical change in Post-War Era, and finds an induced bias, that is, technical change complies with the resource endowments. Then, by comparing the rice production of 6 Asian countries including the Philippines, this study demonstrates that the diffusion of agricultural technology is proved to have a significant impact on productivity. Furthermore, the results of panel data analysis indicates that irrigation infrastructure and government support/procurement price of inputs impact the diffusion of agricultural technology. However, government support/procurement price of rough rice has no significant effect, though it was normally considered important. As far as Philippine agriculture is concerned, its institution construction was just a twist.My study can hereby conclude that the high growth of Philippine agriculture during the Green Revolution was in fact benefited from the investment to irrigation systems in the earlier period, whereas the latter weak sustainability of agricultural development was caused by the distorted institution construction.The contributions of this study are in the following. First, in this thesis, a novel perspective of technical and institutional inputs is applied to analyze the success and failure of Philippine agriculture in Post-War Era. And especially, the reinspection of the Green Revolution is interspersed in the text. Second, my study investigates the technical and institutional change of Philippine agriculture, based on the theory of induced innovation. It can not only provide a new interpretation of Philippine agricultural development, but also once again demonstrate the applicability of induced innovation theory. Third, my study links technical change bias and factor and resource endowments, institution construction and technology diffusion, and furthermore, integrates technology with institution, to study agricultural development, this is a meaningful attempt. And the last one is that, the results of this study also show that, when taking into account the long-run growth or even development, institution will be more important. This is an affirmation of the basic concepts of new institutional economics.