A Study On Chinese Agricultural Total Factor Productivity And Its Influential Factors

In order to maintain the stability and sustained growth of Chinese agriculture as wellas the prosperity and progress of the rural economy and society, it is necessary to changethe mode of agricultural growth from extensive way to intensive way by centering Chineseagricultural growth quality and efficiency. As the epitome of the intensive growth mode,Total Factor Productivity (TFP) can not only reflect the conversion efficiency of thetraditional factors of production into output, it can also reflect the contribution and roles offactors such as technological progress, technical efficiency improvement and institutionalchange. Therefore, the study on Chinese agricultural TFP and its influential factors has avery important significance to promote the growth of Chinese agricultural TFP growth,improve the quality and efficiency of Chinese agricultural and ultimately achieve the raidand sustained growth of Chinese agriculture.Using the TFP theories as its theoretical framework, this paper uses DEA and SFA tomeasure the30provinces’ agricultural TFP growth and its components in2000-2009inorder to clear the general trends and characteristics of Chinese agricultural TFP growth.Then reveal the effect scale and direction of some influential factors on the growth ofChinese agricultural TFP through empirical research with the balanced panel data model.DEA and SFA come to similar conclusions through the decomposition of agriculturalTFP, and affirm the positive role of technological advances in agricultural TFP andagricultural development, while the deterioration of technical efficiency offsets thepositive effect on agricultural TFP growth. Chinese agricultural development showssignificant differences among regions and eastern part still plays the leader role. Centraland western parts show the momentum in the efforts to narrow the gap with nationalagricultural TFP. Natural and policy environment, and changes of factor quality havedifferent effect on agricultural TFP growth. Continue to improve the policy environmentfor agricultural development, increase the public investment in rural areas, introduce theadvanced technology and machinery and further promote the process of agriculturalmodernization will effectively promote Chinese agricultural TFP growth.