a century of u s farm productivity growth a surge then a slowdown u s farm productivity growth has direct consequences for sustainably feeding the world s still rapidly growing population as well as u s competitiveness in international markets using a newly expanded compilation of multifactor productivity mfp estimates and associated partial factor productivity pfp measures we examine changes in the pattern of u s agricultural productivity growth over the past century and more considering the evidence as a whole we detect sizable and significant slowdowns in the rate of productivity growth in recent decades u s multifactor productivity grew at an annual average rate of just 1 16 per year during 1990 2007 compared with 1 42 per year for the period 1910 2007 u s yields of major crops grew at an annual average rate of 1 17 per year for 1990 2009 compared with 1 81 per year for 1936 1990 more subtly but with potentially profound implications the relatively high rates of mfp growth during the third quarter of the century are an historical aberration relative to the long run trend

capital as a factor of production in oecd agriculture measurement and data this article provides a farm sector comparison of levels of capital input for fourteen oecd countries for the period 1973 to 2002 the starting point for construction of a measure of capital input is the measurement of capital stock estimates of depreciable capital are derived by representing capital stock at each point of time as a weighted sum of past investments the weights correspond to the relative efficiencies of capital goods of different ages so that the weighted components of capital stock have the same efficiency estimates of the stock of land are derived from balance sheet data we convert estimates of capital stock into estimates of capital service flows by means of capital rental prices comparisons of levels of capital input among countries require data on relative prices of capital input we obtain relative price levels for capital input via relative investment goods prices taking into account the flow of capital input per unit of capital stock in each country

do formula or competitive grant funds have greater impacts on state agricultural productivity this article examines the impact of public agricultural research and extension on agricultural total factor productivity at the state level the objective is to establish whether federal formula or competitive grant funding of agricultural research has a greater impact on state agricultural productivity a pooled cross section time series model of agricultural productivity is fitted to annual data for forty eight contiguous states over 1970 1999 our results show that public agricultural research and agricultural extension have statistically significant positive impacts on state agricultural productivity in addition hatch formula funding has a larger impact on agricultural productivity than federal competitive grant funding and a reallocation of hatch formula funds to competitive grant funding would lower agricultural productivity this seems unlikely to be a socially optimal policy furthermore from a cost benefit perspective our study shows that the social marginal annualized real rate of return to public resources invested in agricultural research is 49 62 and to public agricultural extension the rate is even larger

share contracts and their rationale lessons from marine fishing most of the existing literature on share contracts is based explicitly or implicitly on agriculture a sector in which share contracts are seldom dominant and apparently on the decline moreover since agricultural activities have some rather special characteristics the purpose of the present article is to analyse contractual choice and especially the choice of share contracts in a sector in which share contracts are dominant namely fishing in the process of explaining the dominance of share contracts in fishing the article also explains a some heretofore neglected features of these share contracts such as the way in which shares are calculated and the treatment of repair and maintenance expenditures b the nature and extent of interlinked transactions c the exceptional cases where share contracts are not used and d the relevance of varying environmental conditions and especially those of poor developing countries to the nature of contracts in fishing and to the differences therein between

usury and collateral pricing towards an alternative explanation in a contribution to this journal bhaduri 1977 built an interesting model to show how the method of usury operates in the agricultural sector of less developed countries in his model the money lender could make capital gains by taking over the asset or the collateral of the borrowers at a price much below the market price this model was put forth as an explanation for high interest rates lenders would charge high rates of interest to force borrowers with cash constraints to default and then take away from the latter an under priced collateral bhaduri s model was a critique of bottomley s 1963 1975 default rate

output input and productivity measurement in u s agriculture 1948 79 tornqvist theil indexes of outputs and inputs are constructed these data are used to construct indexes of productivity growth over the postwar period the productivity indexes can be derived from a flexible multioutput multifactor representation of the structure of production constrained to constant returns to scale total factor productivity grew at an average annual rate of 1 75 compared with 1 70 per year estimated by the u s department of agriculture the similar estimates of productivity growth overshadow some important differences in measurement of individual inputs the major effort in measuring agricultural productivity is undertaken by the u s department of agriculture usda an american agricultural economics association task force on measuring productivity has examined the sources and procedures used in constructing the official statistics see loomis and barton lambert barton and durost the task force recommended that the usda adopt a series of specific improvements for constructing certain inputs and use an indexing procedure that does not impose a priori restrictions on the structure of production 1 this paper presents revised indexes of outputs and inputs the data are used to construct indexes of productivity growth over the postwar period the productivity indexes can be derived from a flexible multioutput multifactor representation of the structure of production the translog transformation function constrained to constant returns to scale 2 the indexes of outputs and inputs have the same form and their ratio coincides with the estimate of productivity growth

theories of share tenancy a critical survey for the past 2 decades the problems of agricultural tenancy have attracted a great deal of attention not only from agricultural economists but also from economists in general as a typical example of agencyprincipal contract relations despite the prolific growth of literature both theoretical and empirical there has been little convergence in opinions on tenancy contracts the divergence has been especially great on the understanding of the causes and the effects of sharecropping tenancy much confusion underlying the widely divergent perspectives has stemmed from partial treatments of contractual choice which unduly limit the optimizing behavior of contracting parties and the options of contract forms this essay aims at clarifying the sources of the confusion by reviewing the past literature in light of the more general theory of agency principal relations the agency theory in order to examine the problems of various theoretical models in a unified framework in section ii we first develop the basic framework of a general model of tenancy contract in section iii we clarify in terms of the general model contradictions latent in the traditional marshallian theory which asserts that share tenancy is inefficient because of the disincentive effect of cropsharing on the tenant s work effort in section iv we attempt to show that recent efforts to reconstruct the theory based on the traditional assumption have not yet been quite successful section v draws implications and testable hypotheses from more general theories incorporating the aspects of risk and uncertainty section vi tests allocational and distributional implications of those alternative hypotheses based on the summary of evidence col

the cyclical behaviour of inventories european cross country evidence from the early 1990s recession this paper employs data for a panel of firms from france italy and the uk to study the effect of the recession of the early 1990s on inventory investment controlling for cyclical fluctuations at the firm level the results clearly show some common patterns across countries pointing to the relevance of financial factors namely the level of leverage in propagating initial recessionary shocks moreover italian firms especially if small and young seem more likely to suffer from a reduction in the value of collateralizable assets possibly originated by restrictive policy actions

rural financial markets in low income countries recent controversies and lessons abstract recently some researchers have criticized traditional agricultural credit policies in low income countries this article identifies the major points of controversy between traditional views and these new views and also summarizes the primary lessons learned from these controversies savings mobilization more flexible interest rate policies less loan targeting and greater emphasis on improving the quality of financial services in rural areas are new views that are emphasized

imperfect price deflation in production systems numeraire prices that are measured with error create challenges for econometric estimation a straightforward approach for a model with linear input demands such as generated from a quadratic normalized profit function is proposed where the numeraire price is measured with error numeraire measurement error is likely because expected output price is measured imperfectly by actual output price an approach using generalized method of moments is developed to estimate such errors in variables systems that avoids use of extra sample data or additional structural specifications monte carlo examination of small sample properties shows promise measurement error is statistically significant using aggregate u s agricultural data

community and market in contract choice the jeepney in the philippines economic development is usually associated with a transformation from traditional economic institutions based on local community ties to modern institutions based on wide impersonal markets an often cited example is the shift from crop sharing to leasehold tenancy in the past it was commonly considered that sharecropping was inefficient in achieving optimal resource allocations because it reduced tenants incentives to apply their own labor as well as other current inputs and that the conversion of sharecroppers to leaseholders or owner operators represented a precondition of modern agricultural development indeed land tenure reform programs that rule out the practice of sharecropping have been advocated widely and adopted in some developing countries 2 this view based on the well known marshallian theorem has been demolished recently by the new land tenure economics or more broadly the theory of contract choice started by cheung and elaborated by newbery stiglitz and others 3 it has now been established that the actual contract choice depends on risk and transaction costs without which both the share and leasehold contracts can achieve pareto optimality on the other hand historically in the course of urban industrial development in western europe and japan the cropsharing contract was replaced by the leasehold contract in land tenure while the piece rate contract was replaced by the time rate contract in labor employment such observations interpreted in the light of the

post war productivity patterns in u s agriculture influences of aggregation procedures in a state level analysis annual data for forty eight states are used to account for changes in the composition of input and output aggregates over space and time and thereby to obtain new evidence on changes in inputs outputs and productivity in u s agriculture the measures change significantly when we use state specific rather than national prices and when we allow for changes in the composition of the aggregates especially of labor and capital inputs we compare our estimates and those reported by ball et al american journal of agricultural economics 81 1999 164 79 the national estimates are similar but substantial differences are found in state level productivity growth

a new global database on agriculture investment and capital stock abstract this paper introduces a new analytical database on aggregate physical investment flows and capital stock in agriculture forestry and fishing for 189 countries and territories over the period 1995 2017 long time series of the agricultural investment to value added ratio are employed to obtain agricultural investment flows these latter are subsequently converted into capital stock series by applying a variant of the perpetual inventory method this article describes the database content and the data sources the methodology used to deal with missing data in the investment to value added ratio as well as several measurement issues underlying its development lastly it presents an overview of the main global and regional trends in agricultural gross fixed capital formation and capital stock drawing some implications and directions for future research

reflections on agricultural r d productivity and the data constraint unfinished business unsettled issues sixty years ago t w schultz introduced the idea of the productivity residual to agricultural economics 1956 schultz s main message was that growth in conventional inputs accounted for little of the observed growth in agricultural output and that there was work to be done by agricultural economists to understand and ultimately eliminate this unexplained residual called productivity thus was launched the economics of agricultural productivity as a sub field within agricultural economics along with the economics of agricultural r d and innovation and related government policy much progress has been made in the decades since still critical issues remain unresolved this matters because agricultural innovation and productivity matter and so do the related policies that rest to some extent on our established understanding of the economic relationships in this paper i review some unsettled issues related to economic models and measures applied to agricultural r d and productivity and some unfinished business in terms of economic and policy questions that are not yet well answered before doing that i present some evidence on agricultural productivity and why it matters next with a nod to factology i present available productivity measures from the u s department of agriculture usda and international science and technology practice and policy instepp center and compare them in the context of translog cost function models in subsequent sections i use these and other data to develop new evidence related to two contentious questions a do farmers benefit from public agricultural r d b has u s agricultural productivity growth slowed in recent decades the answers are revealed within

agricultural productivity revisited this paper describes production accounts for agriculture output is defined as gross production leaving the farm as opposed to real value added inputs are not limited to capital and labor but include intermediate inputs as well we derive index numbers of gross output capital labor and intermediate inputs these data are used to construct indexes of total factor productivity we then compare the contributions of input growth and productivity growth to economic growth the important role of productivity growth in agriculture becomes immediately apparent

effective costs and chemical use in united states agricultural production using the environment as a free input a cost function based production model is used to represent patterns of input use and output production in u s agriculture and the implied costs of induced reductions in risk from agricultural chemicals bad outputs we estimate and evaluate shadow values for these harmful outputs and the implied input and output specific substitution patterns with a focus on the impacts on pesticide demand and its quality and quantity components using state level data we find these measures to be statistically significant vary substantively by region and imply increased demand for effective pesticides associated with improvements in quality from embodied technology copyright 2002 oxford university press

capitalism and kinship do institutions matter in the labor market this study examines the determination of employment and pay on capitalist and kinship vessels in the new england fishing industry capitalist vessels resemble standard competitive firms in the way that employment and pay respond to changing market conditions kinship vessels operate under work guarantees and income sharing rules these differences in institutional rules lead to different patterns of income employment growth and labor adjustment the study shows how an understanding of the institutional structure of labor markets can contribute to the design of public policies to facilitate adjustment to change and to promote industrial growth

capital services in u s agriculture concepts comparisons and the treatment of interest rates this paper begins with a review of the methods and assumptions used to measure capital service flows two data series on capital inputs in u s agriculture are briefly described and compared we show that measures of capital services are sensitive to the treatment of interest rates notably the use of fixed versus variable market rates significantly affects measures of the quantity and productivity of agricultural capital in the united states we conclude that when calculating capital usage in u s agriculture the use of a fixed interest rate generates more plausible estimates than the use of an annual market rate

how the data we make can unmake us annals of factology scrutiny we give to propositions derived from theory claims of statistical significance of a regression result or a bald assertion consider why do people still ranch and why lately have more ranchers started to write poetry about their lives new york times july 5 1992 if you were to make such a poetical claim you could expect to be asked for supporting data but to take an example of the other kind after you quote world bank gdp tables to show real income growth in developing countries slowing up in the 1980s your assertion that real income growth slowed in the 1980s is likely to be unchallenged this is wrong for the supine acceptance of data can cause scientific mischief of the worst kind believing we know things that aren t so the purposes of this paper are to show how the data agricultural economists use can mislead and to discuss what might be done about it

input demands and inefficiency in u s agriculture markov chain monte carlo mcmc methods are used to estimate a seemingly unrelated regression sur system of input demand functions for u s agriculture our demand functions have flexible forms and allow for nonrandom technical inefficiency concavity constraints are imposed at individual data points and the distributions of measures of relative technical efficiency are constrained to the unit interval results are evaluated in terms of characteristics of the posterior distributions of parameters measures of relative technical efficiency and other nonlinear functions of the parameters

rural credit markets and institutions in developing countries lessons for policy analysis from practice and modern theory this article presents evidence of the failure of government intervention in rural credit markets of ldcs in the past three decades it then shows how lessons for policy analysis can be drawn from modern theory particularly those theories focussing on credit rationing in competitive markets and interlinking of credit contracts with labor and land contracts the article outlines the policy implications of these theories and finds them insufficient to account for the empirical evidence it contends that a more systematic and rigorous analysis of institutions and institutional environments is essential for understanding and implementing effective policy reforms of rural credit markets it presents suggestions for undertaking such an analysis

convergence in u s productivity growth for agriculture implications of interstate research spillovers for funding agricultural research state crop livestock and aggregate agricultural total factor productivity tfp data 1950 82 are examined for evidence of convergence to a single tfp level convergence or to a steady state rate of growth or conditional convergence our empirical results do not support convergence but do support convergence the rate of convergence is variable and depends on research and development r d spillins from other states private r d and farmers schooling the finding of strong positive interstate spillover effects implies that independent state planning of agricultural research is inefficient and cooperation across states boundaries including establishment of new political jurisdictions for financing public agricultural research can enhance efficiency

induced innovation in u s agriculture time series direct econometric and nonparametric tests the hypothesis of induced innovation is tested for u s agriculture using a high quality state level panel data set and three disparate testing techniques time series direct econometric and nonparametric we find little support for the hypothesis that conclusion is robust across testing techniques however as with all empirical tests of this hypothesis conducted to date ours focus only on the demand side of the hypothesis the hypothesis could have been rejected simply because the marginal cost of developing and implementing input saving technologies for the relatively expensive inputs is greater than for the relatively cheap inputs copyright 2009 oxford university press

an inquiry into quasi credit contracts the role of reciprocal credit and interlinked deals in small scale fishing communities in agrarian village societies beset with many hazards and uncertainties people evolve various means of coping with risk what is perhaps less known is that credit transactions can sometimes serve the function of reducing risk in such societies this article is concerned with examining several insurance motivated credit arrangements in small scale fishing communities a hunger insurance mechanism of reciprocal credit and a system of interlinked contracts aimed at insuring against risks in the spheres of labour and marketing relations will be extensively dealt with moreover the concept of triadic relationships will be shown to have special relevance in the case of traditional insurance arrangements aiming at controlling problems of moral hazard

risk sharing and group decision making in a decision making problem where a group will receive an uncertain payoff which must be divided among the members of the group the ultimate payoff of interest is the vector of individual payoffs received by the members of the group in this paper preferences are quantified in terms of cardinal utility functions for such vectors of payoffs these utility functions can represent preferences concerning equitable and inequitable vectors of payoffs as well as attitudes toward risk the individual utility functions are aggregated to form a group utility function for the vector of payoffs and this latter function is in turn used to generate a group utility function for the overall group payoff and a sharing rule for dividing the group payoff into individual payoffs the resulting group decisions are pareto optimal in utility space properties of the sharing rule and the group utility function are investigated for additive and multilinear group utility functions

patterns of state productivity growth in the u s farm sector linking state and aggregate models this article focuses on agricultural productivity growth at both sector and state levels it does so in a way that preserves the economic integrity of national and state production accounts a model accounting for interstate transactions in farm goods links sectorwide and state specific measures of total factor productivity growth an interesting conclusion is that the smooth persistently positive trend typically observed for farm sector productivity growth masks considerable variation across states and regions the results also indicate that farm sector productivity growth is wholly a function of productivity trends in the individual states interstate shifts in production activity and resource reallocations have had little impact