Explaining Cross-Country Differences in Productivity: Is it Efficiency or Factor Endowments?

Agricultural Risk, Intermediate Inputs and Cross-Country Productivity Differences∗

Agricultural labor productivity is key for understanding aggregate cross-country income differences. One important proximate cause of low agricultural productivity is the low use of intermediate inputs, such as fertilizers, in developing countries. This paper argues that farmers in poor countries rationally choose to use fewer intermediate inputs because it limits their exposure to large uninsu...

Inputs Accumulation Or Productivity: Which Factor Is The Leading Contributor To Economic Growth In Iran?

Explaining cross-country variation in cigarette consumption

This short paper uses cross-country data on per capita cigarette consumption and selected socio-economic variables to explain inter-country differentials in consumption. It is found that the proportion of the aged in the total population and higher literacy among women have relatively greater and positive impact on cigarette consumption. Even after controlling for the effect of the two variable...

Total Factor Productivity (TFP)- What is it?

This article identifies environmental pollution as a result of unnecessary use of scarce resources or a substance released to the air, water, or land that could harm human health or the environment. It is proposed that instead of incurring cost to remedy an environmental disaster or to prevent pollution through investment in carbon intensive energy infrastructure, a more practical and cost effe...

Explaining Economic Growth: Factor Accumulation, Total Factor Productivity Growth, and Production Efficiency Improvement

This paper examines cross-country patterns of economic growth by estimating a stochastic frontier production function for 80 developed and developing countries and decomposing output change into factor accumulation, total factor productivity growth, and production efficiency improvement. In addition, this paper incorporates the quality of inputs in analyzing output growth, where the productivit...