World agricultural convergence

Lingran Yuan; Shurui Zhang; Shuo Wang; Zesen Qian; Binlei Gong

doi:10.1007/s11123-021-00600-5

World agricultural convergence

J Product Anal. 2021;55(2):135-153. doi: 10.1007/s11123-021-00600-5. Epub 2021 Mar 26.

Authors

Lingran Yuan^#¹, Shurui Zhang^#¹, Shuo Wang^#¹, Zesen Qian^#², Binlei Gong^#^{1

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Agricultural Economics and Management, School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
² School of Economics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
³ Academy of Social Governance, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁴ Academy of Social Governance, China Academy for Rural Development, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The goal of this article is to answer two questions: Has world agricultural convergence occurred? If not, how can this goal be fulfilled? This article introduces a model averaging method to consider both a parametric and a semi-parametric SFA model to better estimate technical efficiency. Then, three types of convergence tests are employed to check if world agricultural catch-up occurs and to determine the degree of convergence across different groups of countries. The empirical results on a balanced panel of 126 countries from 1970-2014 show that world agricultural convergence has not occurred. This article then investigates the situations in different groups of countries and discusses how to use international trade, irrigation system, and structural transformation to improve agricultural efficiency and to diminish the efficiency gap among different countries in the future.

Keywords: Convergence Tests; Productivity and Efficiency; Regional Catch-up; Stochastic Frontier Analysis; World Agricultural Convergence.