The Relationship between Energy Consumption and Total Factor Productivity in Agriculture: Application of Quantile Regression Approach

Considering the critical role of energy consumption and productivity in economic growth, the central purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of some key macroeconomic variables and energy consumption on the total factor productivity of the agriculture sector in Iran. First, the Solo residual parametric method is employed to estimate the total factor productivity index. Subsequently, the quantile regression method is applied to time series data for the period 1967-2016 in order to investigate the impact of mentioned variables on the total factor productivity. The main results showed that energy consumption and lagged inflation rate have a negative and significant impact on the total factor productivity in agriculture in the 0.25 and 0.5 quantiles. On the contrary, market exchange rate, foreign investment, and lagged TFP exhibit a positive and significant impact on the total factor productivity of the agricultural sector.