Review on China's agricultural TFP:1989-2009

Chinese agricultural resources and environmental constraints are becoming more and more serious.The capability of increasing agricultural outputs through raising natural resource and factor inputs is becoming increasingly weaker.The research on agricultural TFP(total factor productivity) is significant for the sustainable agricultural development in China.This paper reviewed both domestic and overseas literature on the empirical studies of China's agricultural TFP during 1989-2009,especially focusing on the calculating methods,growth evolution characteristics and influence factors of China's agricultural TFP.There were 4 research approaches to agricultural TFP,namely,production function approach,growth accounting index approach,DEA-based Malmquist productivity index approach and SFA approach.The evolution of China's agricultural TFP growth had the following characteristics:technological progress was the main source of TFP growth;inter-provincial gaps in agricultural TFP growth gradually enlarged.The main factor affecting agricultural TFP growth was the institutional change in rural areas.Finally,based on the existing problems in the agricultural TFP research,the paper pointed out that the estimates of various factors' impacts on the inter-provincial differences in agricultural TFP will be the direction for the future research.