Article The Impact of Climatic Change Adaptation on Agricultural Productivity in Central Chile: A Stochastic Production Frontier Approach Lisandro Roco 1,*, Boris Bravo-Ureta 2,3, Alejandra Engler 3,4 and Roberto Jara-Rojas 3,4 1 Department of Economics and Institute of Applied Regional Economics (IDEAR), Universidad Católica del Norte, Antofagasta 1240000, Chile 2 Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Connecticut, Storrs 06269, CT, USA;
[email protected] 3 Department of Agricultural Economics, Universidad de Talca, Talca 3460000, Chile;
[email protected] (A.E.);
[email protected] (R.J.-R.) 4 Center for Socioeconomic Impact of Environmental Policies (CESIEP), Talca 3460000, Chile * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +56-55-235-5770 Received: 23 June 2017; Accepted: 13 September 2017; Published: 16 September 2017 Abstract: Adaptation to climate change is imperative to sustain and promote agricultural productivity growth, and site-specific empirical evidence is needed to facilitate policy making. Therefore, this study analyses the impact of climate change adaptation on productivity for annual crops in Central Chile using a stochastic production frontier approach. The data come from a random sample of 265 farms located in four municipalities with different agro-climatic conditions. To measure climate change adaptation, a set of 14 practices was used in three different specifications: binary variable, count and index; representing decision, intensity and quality of adaptation, respectively. The aforementioned alternative variables were used in three different stochastic production frontier models. Results suggest that the use of adaptive practices had a significant and positive effect on productivity; the practice with the highest impact on productivity was irrigation improvement.