Does FDI promote or inhibit the high-quality development of agriculture in China? An agricultural GTFP perspective

Abstract

This paper innovatively brings the undesirable output of agricultural carbon emission into the agricultural Total Factor Productivity (TFP) accounting framework as a measure of Green Total Factor Productivity (GTFP) and uses the Slack-based Measure and Malmquist-Luenberger (SBM-ML) index method to measure the agricultural GTFP of 24 provinces in China from 2004 to 2016. Further, the two-step system generalized moment method (GMM) is adopted to reveal the effect of agricultural (Foreign Direct Investment) FDI on the growth of agricultural GTFP and various subitems. We find that the average annual growth rate of agricultural GTFP is 3.1%, and its contribution rate to agricultural growth is 52%; the growth of agricultural GTFP shows that the progress of agricultural technology is accompanied by the deterioration of agricultural technical efficiency; the agricultural GTFP in the Eastern region, the Central region and theWestern region increases in a stepped-up form, with an annual growth rate of 3.1%, 3.3% and 3.4%, respectively. Agricultural FDI has a significant promoting effect on agricultural GTFP and subitems, however, it has an inverted U-shaped feature in the long term.