Efficiency impact of the agricultural sector on economic growth in Togo

Abstract

The fundamental idea of this article is to study the efficiency of the Togolese agriculture and its relationship with economic growth on the basis of economies of scale. We tackled efficiency, in its input and output orientations, using parametric and non-parametric methods in which an annual product analysis is carried out. In this context, agriculture is modelled by the usual Translog and Cobb-Douglas functions and efficiency estimating techniques, such as the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). Agricultural production was analyzed on a product basis depending on the cultivated area and the number of workers in the agricultural field. The study sample consists of 15 agricultural products for the period running from 1990 to 2009. The Togolese agriculture is generally inefficient according to the DEA and SFA methods.

Dynamics of Agricultural Productivity and Technical Efficiency in Togo: The Role of Technological Change

“…At the national level, the estimates reveal that average agricultural productivity technical efficiency is 0.74. This result is similar to the findings of Karmel et al () that indicate that Togolese agricultural technical efficiency is 0.76. The analysis of these scores indicates that if we consider the threshold of 0.90 as good performance in terms of technical efficiency, three regions — Plateaux, Centrale and Savanes — have the potential to increase their cereal productivity through technical efficiency.…”

“…Very few studies have dealt with dynamic analysis of the agricultural sector in Togo (Karmel et al , ). However, these studies failed completely to account for endogeneity and regional heterogeneity.…”

“…Two types of approaches are commonly applied in efficiency analysis related to productivity: the frontier and the non‐frontier approaches (Karmel et al , ; Kiendrebeogo, ; Nkamleu, ). The non‐frontier approach mainly employs deterministic techniques which include growth accounting and index numbers.…”