ABSTRACT The national beef cattle improvement scheme was introduced by the South African government with the objective of improving the biological and ecological efficiency of beef production through genetic improvement and enhanced cattle management practices. This has been achieved through various structural and technological changes targeted at increasing beef production and promoting sustainable production systems. Despite the technical success of the programme, and the substantial investment made into it, there is limited information on the returns to investment made in the beef improvement scheme in South Africa. Using time series data from 1970–2014, the study uses an econometric approach modelled through the Almon Polynomial Distribution to estimate the lead period and rate of return from investment in beef cattle improvement research. The lag effect and absence of a lead-time suggest that research impacts beef production in the current year of investment. A marginal rate of return of 32 per cent implies that South Africa received R32 for every rand invested towards the scheme. This suggests that the research investment is worthwhile and motivates for continuation of the beef cattle improvement research given significant and positive economic efficiency measures.

中文翻译：

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南非肉牛改良研究投资的经济回报

摘要 南非政府引入了国家肉牛改良计划，目的是通过遗传改良和加强牛管理实践来提高牛肉生产的生物和生态效率。这是通过旨在增加牛肉产量和促进可持续生产系统的各种结构和技术变革来实现的。尽管该计划在技术上取得了成功，并对其进行了大量投资，但关于南非牛肉改良计划投资回报的信息有限。该研究使用 1970 年至 2014 年的时间序列数据，使用通过阿尔蒙多项式分布建模的计量经济学方法来估计肉牛改良研究投资的提前期和回报率。滞后效应和没有提前期表明研究会影响当前投资年度的牛肉生产。32% 的边际回报率意味着南非为该计划投资的每一兰特都能获得 32 兰特。这表明研究投资是值得的，并且考虑到显着和积极的经济效率措施，可以激励继续肉牛改良研究。