Climatic effects and agricultural productivity: The case of El Salvador
Submitted: 2024-12-03
|Accepted: 2025-05-14
|Published: 2026-06-26
Copyright (c) 2026 Boris Bravo-Ureta, Eric Njuki, Roberto Jara-Rojas, Lina Salazar
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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Keywords:
El Salvador, panel data, Stochastic Production Frontiers, productivity, climatic effects
Supporting agencies:
InterAmerican Development Bank
Abstract:
We analyze Total Factor Productivity (TFP) using a large farm level panel data set from El Salvador, a country highly vulnerable to climatic events. For this purpose, alternative stochastic production frontier models are implemented to evaluate the robustness of the analysis. Key findings show that temperature shocks adversely impact output, aggregate rainfall has a positive effect, while mean temperature exhibits no significant effect. Furthermore, TFP declined by -5.36 % on average, while average technological change and technical efficiency declined by -2.25 % and -1.36 %, respectively with considerable variability across time and space.
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