Convergence of Labour Productivity in Agriculture of the European Union

Abstract

Labour productivity is commonly considered as one of the most important parameters of development of economies, because it is conductive to reduction of costs, increase in supply of cheaper goods and services, higher dynamics of the market and higher purchasing power of societies, their wealth and competitive ability. But labour productivity is-at the backdrop of the EU countries-highly diversified, including in particular in agriculture where its level is much lower than in other sectors of the economy. The main objective of the presented paper is to examine and assess the changes in labour productivity in the EU agriculture in the context of the diversity of its level and dynamics of change underlying the identification of labour productivity convergence/divergence processes taking place in agriculture. The labour productivity convergence processes in the EU agriculture were analysed based on data from the period between 2005 and 2016, by testing two its basic types, namely sigma and beta convergence. The analysis applied statistical measures describing the degree of labour productivity differentiation in agriculture of the EU countries and cross-sectional regression function. The research showed that sigma and beta convergence exist in general in the EU-28 countries and in the group of the new Member States (UE-13). In the group of old Member States, however, no sigma convergence/divergence was identified, but statistically significant beta divergence was noted.

Club convergence of labour productivity in agriculture: Evidence from EU countries

“…The disproportionate levels of agricultural labour productivity in Western European countries and Gołaś (2019) attributes this increase to lower employment numbers in agriculture, especially in the new member states. According to Csaki and Jambor (2019), there is still a significant labour productivity gap between "new" and "old" members of the EU-15 in terms of agriculture.…”

“…Increases in productivity lead to lower costs, market dynamisation and an increase in the wealth and competitive purchasing power of societies. This particularly applies to the agricultural sector, in which the level of labour productivity in EU countries is strongly diversified and significantly lower than in other sectors of the economy (Gołaś 2019). This measure in convergence studies was used by Cuerva (2011), Martín-Retortillo andPinilla (2012), and Gołaś (2019).…”

“…output per unit of workforce used) may be more informative than TFP. It should be noted that majority of research on convergence processes of labour productivity in agriculture (McErlean and Wu 2003;Cuerva 2011;Baer-Nawrocka and Markiewicz 2012;Gołaś 2019) does not directly consider the specifics of individual countries/regions. Such an approach may lead to bias in convergence tests because convergence processes of productivity may be restricted to a specific set of economies with similar economic, structural, and natural conditions.…”

Agricultural Resources and their Productivity: A Transatlantic Perspective

“…There are many studies that deal with these two concepts of productivity measurement. Partial factor productivity indicators were used e.g., by Bureau and Butault (1992), Alston et al (2010), Martin-Retortillo and Pinilla (2012), Petrick and Kloss (2012), Cherlet et al (2013), Takács (2014), Smędzik-Ambroży and Majchrzak (2017), Diao et al (2018), Gołaś (2019), and Kusz (2020). In turn, the total factor productivity (TFP) approach was employed by Ahearn et al (1998), Davidova et al (2003), Coelli and Prasada Rao (2005), Latruffe et al (2008), Jin et al (2010), Ludena (2010), Gasques et al (2012), Rahman and Salim (2013), Jitea and Pocol (2014), Nin-Pratt (2015), Wang et al (2015), Anik et al (2017), , Kijek and Matras-Bolibok (2019), Liu et al (2020) or Sheng et al (2020).…”

“…Those analyses used TFP indices or all partial productivity indicators. At the same time some authors described only labor productivity (Takács, 2014;Gołaś, 2019), land productivity (Cherlet et al, 2013;Smędzik-Ambroży and Majchrzak, 2017) or capital productivity in selected countries (Petrick and Kloss, 2012). Agricultural structures were also included in the scope of scientific interests.…”