Measuring total factor productivity in agriculture: a bibliometric review

Łukasz Kryszak,Jakub Staniszewski,Katarzyna Świerczyńska

doi:10.1108/ijoem-04-2020-0428

Abstract

PurposeTotal factor productivity (TFP) has become a prominent concept in agriculture economics and policy over the last three decades. The main aim of this paper is to obtain a detailed picture of the field via bibliometric analysis to identify research streams and future research agenda.Design/methodology/approachThe data sample consists of 472 papers in several bibliometric exercises. Citation and collaboration structure analyses are employed to identify most important authors and journals and track the interconnections between main authors and institutions. Next, content analysis based on bibliographic coupling is conducted to identify main research streams in TFP.FindingsThree research streams in agricultural TFP research were distinguished: TFP growth in developing countries in the context of policy reforms (1), TFP in the context of new challenges in agriculture (2) and finally, non-parametric TFP decomposition based on secondary data (3).Originality/valueThis research indicates agenda of future TFP research, in particular broadening the concept of TFP to the problems of policy, environment and technology in emerging countries. It provides description of the current state of the art in the agricultural TFP literature and can serve as a “guide” to the field.

Highlights

Rapid growth of world population poses a major challenge to the agricultural sector due to the rising demand for food over the coming decades (Hubert et al, 2010)
We demonstrate that agricultural TFP (agTFP) leans to include problems of climate change, human capital and research and development (R&D)
In the present paper we put three research questions regarding journals, institutions and authors impact on agTFP research, Total factor productivity (TFP) measurements methods and their evolution as well as present and possible future research in the topic

Summary

Introduction

Rapid growth of world population poses a major challenge to the agricultural sector due to the rising demand for food over the coming decades (Hubert et al, 2010). It is due to scarcity of agricultural land and available labour force. Agricultural policy (e.g. in the European Union) imposes environmental requirements which impact agricultural intensity. These factors raise the importance of productivity change, which occurs when the index of inputs changes at a different rate than the index of output (Kumbhakar and Lovell, 2000). Nowadays productivity is often related to environmental issues and agricultural policy which results in the inclusion of these elements in productivity studies (Barath et al, 2020; Liu et al, 2021; Han et al, 2020)

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