Estimation And Decomposition Of China's Agricultural Technological Progress Rate(1985～2005)

This paper studies the agricultural growth and technological progress quantitively, applying the trancendental logarithmic stochastic frontier model with unbalanced panel data of provinces. The main objectives are calculating the yield elastisities of production factors and contribution rate of agricultural technological progress, and decompose the agricultural technological progress rate into three components, including narrow technological progress rate, viarition rate of technical efficiency and scale returns.This study shows that the narrow technological progress rate, whose main part was achieved form the neutral progress mode, has always been the most important component of agricultural technological progress. During the research period, China's agricultural technological progress revealed a steady growth trend, while the contribution rate of agricultural technological progress showed a certain degree of volatility, subject to the agricultural outcome growth rate difference among the years. Regarding the elastisity of production factors, in one hand, the capital elastisity showed a decreasing trend, in the other hand, the labor elastisity was rising dramatically, and the land elastisity is also increasing. In terms of the interactive effect between the factors, the capital-labor interactive effect revealed a substitutional relation, while capital and labor were both complementary factors to land.In addition, during the research period, China's agriculture can always receive positive returns to scale, and the technical efficiency showed a increasing trend, however, difference between regions is very clear.