Technical efficiency of the agricultural production in Latin America and Caribbean countries

Abstract: This article studies the technical efficiency and the total productivity of agricultural factors in the countries of Latin America and of Caribbean. For this, it was applied the stochastic production frontier approach and the Malmquist productivity index. The data used were the value of production and the quantity of agricultural inputs from the years 1991 to 2012. The results showed that all countries presented technical inefficiency of agricultural production over the period. The variables that significantly explained the inefficiency of agricultural production were credit and energy consumption in agriculture, which represented an innovation in this area. The Malmquist productivity index showed that there were no gains in total factor productivity.