Frikke Liebenberg’s overriding professional passion was to develop, from scratch, an in-depth, evidenced-based understanding of the sources of long-run growth of the South African agricultural economy. He was especially interested in, and had hands-on knowledge about, technical change as a driver of agricultural productivity growth and the role of R&D (research and development) in these consequential change processes. Frikkie not only single-handedly changed our empirical understanding of these important economic development matters, he also relished discussing the practical realities of South African farming, often with an eye to their historical dimensions. He was as comfortable dealing with the trials and tribulations of turning problematic and often hard-tofind numbers into economic data, as he was dealing with the intricacies of index number theory to meaningfully form aggregate measures of agricultural inputs, outputs and productivity, or the technical nuances and practical details involved in determing tractor horsepower ratings. Lipton with Longhurst (1989) attributed the lack of progress in African agriculture to a paucity of decent data. As an agricultural economist with an appreciation of economic and agricultural history, Frikkie understood the profound improvements in economic well-being that come by means of improved productivity growth. He was determined to rectify the many data inaccuracies and missing data problems that impaired our professional efforts to assess South African agriculture and stood in the way of improving public policy and institutional decisions designed to enhance the country’s agricultural economy. The obvious importance of these issues had led the pioneers of our discipline to investigate these matters, beginning in earnest around themid-twentieth century. The first total factor productivity (TFP) index for agriculture was constructed by staff of the US Department of Agriculture (Barton & Cooper, 1948). Then followed Ted Schultz (1953) and Zvi Griliches (1958) estimates of the economic returns to investments in public sector R&D. Griliches (1960) – and later Gardner et al. (1980) – provided perceptive critiques of US agricultural input, output and productivity statistics that served as a guidepost for repeated rounds of revisions of the US estimates. They also shaped the measurement methods that underpin the InSTePP US Production Accounts (see, e.g., Craig & Pardey, 1996; Pardey et al. 2006; Alston et al., 2010), which Frikkie adopted for constructing the corresponding South African accounts. These improvements in economic measurement led to improvements in our understanding of the nature and sources of growth in agricultural output and productivity (e.g., Griliches, 1963; Ball, 1985; Craig & Pardey, 2001), and the wider economy (e.g., Jorgenson & Griliches 1967). Schultz and Griliches passed the productivity and returns-to-research batons to their University of Chicago students Bob Evenson, Vernon Ruttan and Willis Peterson (see, e.g., Ruttan, 1954, 1956; Evenson, 1967; Peterson, 1967). Peterson and Ruttan spent much of their careers at the University of Minnesota, where Phil Pardey trained and then began working with Frikkie in the mid-1990s, first while at IFPRI (the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC) and then the University of Minnesota. Thus there is a direct intellectual lineage between the seminal, initially US centric, work on the economics

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重新调整南非农业增长：Frikkie Liebenberg 纪念馆

Frikke Liebenberg 压倒一切的职业热情是从零开始，对南非农业经济长期增长的来源有深入的、有根据的理解。他对作为农业生产力增长驱动力的技术变革以及研发（研究和开发）在这些随之而来的变革过程中的作用特别感兴趣，并掌握了有关技术变革的实践知识。Frikkie 不仅以一己之力改变了我们对这些重要经济发展问题的实证理解，他还热衷于讨论南非农业的实际现实，通常着眼于它们的历史维度。他很自在地应对将有问题且通常难以找到的数字转化为经济数据的考验和磨难，因为他正在处理复杂的指数理论，以有意义地形成农业投入、产出和生产力的综合衡量标准，或者涉及确定拖拉机马力等级的技术细微差别和实际细节。Lipton 和 Longhurst (1989) 将非洲农业缺乏进展归因于缺乏像样的数据。作为一位对经济和农业历史有鉴赏力的农业经济学家，弗里基明白通过提高生产率增长可以显着改善经济福祉。他决心纠正许多数据不准确和数据缺失问题，这些问题损害了我们评估南非农业的专业努力，并阻碍了旨在改善该国农业经济的公共政策和机构决策的改进。这些问题的明显重要性促使我们学科的先驱们开始认真研究这些问题，并在 20 世纪中叶左右开始。第一个农业全要素生产率 (TFP) 指数是由美国农业部的工作人员构建的 (Barton & Cooper, 1948)。然后遵循 Ted Schultz (1953) 和 Zvi Griliches (1958) 对公共部门研发投资的经济回报的估计。Griliches (1960) – 后来加德纳等人。(1980) – 对美国农业投入、产出和生产力统计数据提供了敏锐的批评，作为反复修订美国估计数的指南。他们还塑造了支撑 InSTePP 美国生产账户的衡量方法（参见，例如，Craig & Pardey，1996；Pardey 等，2006；Alston 等，2010），Frikkie 采用它来构建相应的南非账户。经济衡量方面的这些改进导致我们对农业产出和生产力增长的性质和来源（例如 Griliches，1963；Ball，1985；Craig & Pardey，2001）和更广泛的经济（例如，Jorgenson &格里奇斯 1967）。Schultz 和 Griliches 将生产力和研究回报的指挥棒传给了芝加哥大学的学生 Bob Evenson、Vernon Ruttan 和 Willis Peterson（参见，例如 Ruttan，1954、1956；Evenson，1967；Peterson，1967）。Peterson 和 Ruttan 的大部分职业生涯都在明尼苏达大学度过，Phil Pardey 在那里接受培训，然后在 1990 年代中期开始与 Frikkie 合作，首先是在 IFPRI（华盛顿国际食品政策研究所，DC），然后是明尼苏达大学。因此，在最初以美国为中心的经济学开创性工作之间存在直接的知识血统。