SUMMARY
This paper makes three contributions to the literature on agricultural productivity.First, we provide estimates of growth in agriculture’s total factor productivity(TFP) for a panel of countries using a translog-production function. Incontrast to most of the existing literature, the evidence suggests that agriculturalTFP growth in developing countries has been positive during the pastfour decades. Second, the empirical analysis looks at the determinants of agriculturalproductivity by controlling for infrastructure and other public goods.Third, we pay close attention to international heterogeneity with a special focuson Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. The econometric resultssuggest that electricity generating capacity per capita has had positiveeffects on agricultural TFP, whereas roads and credit availability have hadnegative effects worldwide. Literacy also appears to be important for promotingagricultural productivity. The regression models also control for climacticanomalies and coup d’etat, factors that are rarely found in the literature. Finally,agricultural productivity in LAC countries behaved differently than inother regions: electricity generation was especially relevant before the 1990s,as in the rest of the sample, but its effect declined thereafter; paved roads inLAC appear to influence positively agricultural productivity throughout theperiod under investigation (1960-1997).