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Abstract
This paper measures agricultural productivity among a set of thirteen
Mediterranean countries which includes two EU- 15 countries (Greece and Spain), another
two EU- 25 (Cyprus and Malta) one country under accession negotiations (Turkey) and
eight Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Libya,
Morocco, Syria and Tunisia) from 1961 to 2002. The objective of the paper is twofold:
Firstly, to analyse agricultural productivity growth in the Mediterranean countries by
means of the sequential Malmquist Total Factor Productivity (TFP) index and secondly, to
investigate whether this measure is converging among these countries. In terms of the
first objective, TFP indices are decomposed into efficiency changes and technical changes,
in an attempt to identify the best - practise countries and the overall effect of technological
improvements. In terms of the second, both cross- section and time series tests of
convergence are applied. The former include the conventional β- and σ- convergence
tests, while for the latter, a new method proposed by Nahar and Inder (2002) that allows
for country - specific estimates is used. Neither test finds evidence for unconditional
convergence, but two distinctive periods, one prior and one after 1980 are recognized.
The time series approach identifies four countries to be converging to the mean and
another two to be diverging.