effects of r&d spending and spill-over on agricultural tfp in iran

investing in research and development spending (r&d) affects total factor productivity (tfp).recently new theories of economic growth have emphasized the relationship between r&d and tfpand also identified a number of channels through which a country’s r&d affects tfp of its tradepartner. this study seeks to estimate the effect of agricultural r&d and education spending and someother factors on agricultural tfp in iran during 1971 to 2011. agricultural tfp is calculated usingkendrick index and the model is estimated by ols method using e-views 7.0.all explaining variables in the model (right-hand variables) effect on agricultural productivity indifferent lags positively with 5% confidence. the best lag length is opted using akaike information,schwarz and hannan-quinn criterion. the results show that 1 percent increase in r&d spending inagriculture, education expenditure in agriculture, government investing in agriculture and rainfall willpromote agriculture tfp 0.13 percent by 5 lags, 0.10 percent by 2 lags, 0.14 percent by 1 lag and 0.17percent at the same time respectively. r&d spending in other sectors (except agriculture) and importof capital inputs in agriculture are contained in the model as research spill-over. the elasticity of thesetwo factors is estimated 0.09 by 5 lags and 0.04 by 2 lags