This paper describes production accounts for agriculture. Output is defined as gross production leaving the farm as opposed to real value added. Inputs are not limited to capital and labor but include intermediate inputs as well. We derive index numbers of gross output, capital, labor, and intermediate inputs. These data are used to construct indexes of total factor productivity. We then compare the contributions of input growth and productivity growth to economic growth. The important role of productivity growth in agriculture becomes immediately apparent. Copyright 1997, Oxford University Press.

A consensus appears to have emerged in the literature that per capita income levels and/or levels of productivity in the industrialized market economies have converged significantly over the last century, and especially since the end of the second world war (see, e.g., Abramovitz, Baumol, Baumol and Wolff, De Long, Dollar and Wolff, Dowrick and Nguyen). The results of Abramovitz and Baumol, in particular, highlight these trends. They found an almost perfect inverse relation between labor productivity levels in 1870 and the rate of labor productivity growth between 1870 and 1979 among sixteen OECD countries.Abramovitz also investigated subperiods and found that labor productivity convergence was much slower in the period before World War II than after. Indeed, even in the postwar period, there is evidence from Abramovitz and from Baumol and Wolff that productivity convergence slowed during the 1970s, though this is disputed by Dowrick and Nguyen, who find parameter stability in their catch-up model between pre-and post-1973 periods when controlling for growth of factor intensities. Results of De Long show little evidence of productivity convergence over the last century when the sample is no longer restricted to OECD countries. However, Baumol and Wolff, using the Summers and Heston's sample, which covers countries at all levels of development, find convergence in real GDP per capita among the top third or so of the countries over the 1950-81 period, though it was weaker than among OECD countries alone. More recently, Dollar and Wolff find evidence of convergence of to-

This study looks at international competitiveness of agriculture in the European Union and the United States. The most intuitive concept is that of price competitiveness. We calculate relative prices for 11 member states of the European Union and the United States for the period 1973-2002. We assume that markets are perfectly competitive and in long-run equilibrium, so that the observed price always equals average total cost, as measured by the cost dual to the production function. This assumption is used in our calculation of relative competitiveness and productivity gaps between the European Union and the United States and in our decomposition of relative price movements between changes in relative input prices and changes in relative productivity levels. JEL classifications: Q16, Q17

ArticlesOutput, Input, and Productivity Measurement in U.S. Ag¡ 1948-79 V. Eldon BallTornqvist-Theil indexes of outputs and inputs are constructed. These data are used to construct indexes of productivity growth over the postwar period. The productivity indexes can be derived from a flexible multioutput-muitifactor representation of the structure of production constrained to constant returns to scale. Total factor productivity grew at an average annual rate of 1.75%, compared with 1.70% per year estimated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The similar estimates of productivity growth overshadow some important differences in measurement of individual inputs.

The paper models multiproduct supply response in agriculture and tests key assumptions traditionally maintained in supply response studies. The technology is approximated by a restricted profit function. The properties of the restricted profit function are imposed during estimation. The hypothesis that maintains the existence of output price and quantity indexes that satisfy the adding‐up property is rejected. The existence of individual production functions for each output is also rejected. Unless joint production is permitted, the estimates of responsiveness of a particular commodity to changes in own price or prices of competing outputs are likely to be considerably understated.