摘要：The goal of this study is to empirically evaluate the extent to which agricultural productivity estimates are affected by variation on climate. To do so, we explore the case of the agricultural sector in the Southeast US. This geographical region is influenced seasonally by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomena making it ideal for studying the interaction of climate variability and agricultural productivity. Although, different methodologies have been developed to study TE the stochastic production frontier (SPF) approach offers several advantages over other available alternatives (Kumbhakar and Lovell 2003). Thus, to assess the impact of climatic on TE we estimate alternative SPF models with and without climatic variables. We also test alternative variables to measure the influence of climate on TE; namely, seasonal rain fall and the ENSO phase.
