Open AccessForecasting Wheat Production in Pakistan
Author(s) -
Falak Sher,
Eatzaz Ahmad
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the lahore journal of economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1811-5446
pISSN - 1811-5438
DOI - 10.35536/lje.2008.v13.i1.a3
Subject(s) - hectare , production (economics) , econometrics , autoregressive integrated moving average , economics , null hypothesis , statistics , sample (material) , cobb–douglas production function , economic shortage , mathematics , agricultural economics , agriculture , time series , geography , linguistics , chemistry , philosophy , archaeology , chromatography , government (linguistics) , macroeconomics
This study analyzes the future prospects of wheat production inPakistan. Parameters of the forecasting model are obtained by estimating aCobb-Douglas production function for wheat, while future values of variousinputs are obtained as dynamic forecasts on the basis of separate ARIMAestimates for each input and for each province. Input forecasts andparameters of the wheat production function are then used to generatewheat forecasts. The results of the study show that the most importantvariables for predicting wheat production per hectare (in order ofimportance) are: lagged output, labor force, use of tractors, and sum of therainfall in the months of November to March. The null hypotheses ofcommon coefficients across provinces for most of the variables cannot berejected, implying that all variables play the same role in wheat productionin all the four provinces. Forecasting performance of the model based onout-of-sample forecasts for the period 2005-06 is highly satisfactory with1.81% mean absolute error. The future forecasts for the period of 2007-15show steady growth of 1.6%, indicating that Pakistan will face a slightshortage of wheat output in the future.