IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/igg/jsem00/v7y2018i4p45-61.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Analyzing Africa's Total Factor Productivity Trends: Evidence from the DEA Malmquist Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Chali Nondo

    (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Adams, USA)

  • Juan R. Jaramillo

    (Adelphi University, Garden City, USA)

Abstract

Using data envelopment analysis (DEA), the authors investigate the productivity changes of 42 African countries by computing the Malmquist productivity indices. Subsequently, the measured Malmquist productivity indices become the dependent variables of a pooled truncated regression. The point estimates of the Malmquist indices indicate that TFP improved at an annual rate of 1.97% over the period 1992-2007. The decomposition of TFP shows that the major contribution of TFP growth is technological progress. Nevertheless, technical efficiency also appears to be trending upwards. Therefore, these results suggest that contrary to the dominant view in previous studies, Africa's TFP since the early 1990s has been accompanied by positive technological change rather than stagnation. The second stage results suggest that improving the quality of human capital and FDI not only augments the quality of labor, but also indirectly improves TFP. Regression results also show that an increase in openness positively affects TFP growth as this facilitates adoption of more efficient techniques of production.

Suggested Citation

  • Chali Nondo & Juan R. Jaramillo, 2018. "Analyzing Africa's Total Factor Productivity Trends: Evidence from the DEA Malmquist Approach," International Journal of Sustainable Economies Management (IJSEM), IGI Global, vol. 7(4), pages 45-61, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:igg:jsem00:v:7:y:2018:i:4:p:45-61
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://services.igi-global.com/resolvedoi/resolve.aspx?doi=10.4018/IJSEM.2018100105
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhiyang Shen & Vivian Valdmanis, 2022. "Assessing total factor productivity across Africa: an empirical investigation," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 239-253, December.
    2. Cassandro Mendes & Yannis Arvanitis, 2021. "Working Paper 360 - Total factor productivity and growth strategy in Cabo-Verde," Working Paper Series 2486, African Development Bank.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:igg:jsem00:v:7:y:2018:i:4:p:45-61. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journal Editor (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.igi-global.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.