Agricultural Productivity: Measurement and Sources of Growth addresses measurement issues and techniques in agricultural productivity analysis, applying those techniques to recently published data sets for American agriculture. The data sets are used to estimate and explain state level productivity and efficiency differences, and to test different approaches to productivity measurement. The rise in agricultural productivity is the single most important source of economic growth in the U.S. farm sector, and the rate of productivity growth is estimated to be higher in agriculture than in the non-farm sector. It is important to understand productivity sources and to measure its growth properly, including the effects of environmental externalities.Both the methods and the data can be accessed by economists at the state level to conduct analyses for their own states. In a sense, although not explicitly, the book provides a guide to using the productivity data available on the website of the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Economic Research Service. It should be of interest to a broad spectrum of professionals in academia, the government, and the private sector.

1. Introduction and Overview.- I. Production Accounts and Productivity of U.S. Agriculture.- 2. United States Agriculture, 1960-96: A Multilateral Comparison of Total Factor Productivity.- 3. A Disaggregated Perspective on Post-War Productivity Growth in U.S. Agriculture: Isn't that Spatial?.- 4. Transitive Multilateral Comparisons of Agricultural Output, Input, and Productivity: A Nonparametric Approach.- 5. Productivity Versus Urban Sprawl: Spatial Variations in Land Values.- II. Productivity, Efficiency, and the Role of R&D and Infrastructure.- 6. Parametric Estimation of Technical and Allocative Efficiency in U.S. Agriculture.- 7. Public R&D and Infrastructure Policies: Effects on Cost of Midwestern Agriculture.- 8. Sources of Agricultural Productivity Growth at the State Level, 1960-1993.- III. Productivity Growth and the Environment.- 9. Environmental Indicators of Pesticide Leaching and Runoff from Farm Fields.- 10. The Environmental Performance of the U.S. Agricultural Sector.- 11. The Effect of Ground Water Regulation on Productivity Growth in the Farm Sector.- 12. Costs of Production and Environmental Risk: Resource-Factor Substitution in U.S. Agriculture.- Discussion.- 13. The Usefulness of Productivity Measurement.