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Total 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.

The 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.

Three 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).

This 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.

The purpose of this paper was to establish the contribution of value chain and productivity to trade performance in the dairy industry using evidence from Uganda.

This study research design is cross-sectional and correlational. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 108 dairy farmers, processors and exporters. Data were analysed through correlation coefficients and linear regression using Statistical Package for Social Sciences.

Hierarchical regression results indicate that value chain and productivity contribute significantly to variances in trade performance of dairy products. Therefore, appropriate value chain processes and high levels of productivity lead to increased trade performance in the dairy industry.

This study focusses on trade performance of dairy products in Uganda. These research findings are useful for informing the deliberations of academicians, regulators and the business community. The results are applicable to all countries that carry out trade specifically in dairy products.

The results are important for trade policy development in the dairy industry. For example, this study informs farmers, processors and exporters of dairy products how value chain activities in dairy farming can be re-aligned to achieve better quality and productivity for exportation. Similarly, the current study provides policy guidance for the relevant ministries such as ministry of trade and other players to come up with holistic policy actions aimed at improving the trade performance of dairy products in the country.

To the researchers' knowledge, this is the first study that provides an initial empirical evidence on the contribution of value chain and productivity on trade performance of dairy products in Uganda.

This paper investigates the effect of state-society relations on the industrially-related growth paths of developed countries.

It introduces a novel theoretical framework, the state-business-labor relations (SBLR) framework, where four main actors are identified: the state, big businesspersons or tycoons, owners and managers of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) or Entrepreneurs and labor. Different SBLR categories or modes are introduced depending on levels of coordination and power relations between the studied actors. The paper then investigates how these SBLR modes, through adopting various policies targeting the industrial sector, lead to different growth paths. Rather than focusing only on economic growth, this research regards a growth path as a matrix of the performance in long-run growth and equality of distribution.

Using regression analysis and statistical data, the results suggest that the Co-Balanced mode, having higher levels of coordination and lower favoritism, leads to the best growth path among the four introduced modes, especially with its emphasis on high levels of venture capital availability and easiness of starting business. while the Lib-Capture mode, characterized by lower coordination and higher favoritism, seems to have the worst growth path and the best implemented policy for this mode is suggested to be high profit taxes that seem to counter the negative impact of the existing high levels of favoritism.

Despite the important findings that this research has reached, this paper is mainly meant to open a further investigation into this topic and open this dimension that the research on VoC and political economy have under-researched. A deeper investigation of SBLR typologies that could only be possible by having richer datasets with more data on coordination for the whole world, rather than only the advanced economies, would further our understanding of the dynamics that shape the growth paths of different countries of the world.

To realize the best industrial growth path, fighting favoritism should be an important objective. The negative impact of favoritism on innovation could not be disregarded in the eve of the fourth industrial revolution, where innovation is increasingly pivotal to future industrial development. Actively engaging societal groups in the policymaking process is important in addressing their concerns and balancing them at the same time. This should lead to the double benefit of formulating better policies that should foster growth as well as provide better distribution of this growth. High levels of coordination should help in realizing this objective. Yet, this could only be possible if societal groups are free to associate and aggregate their power and when there are means of preventing one actor from gaining more favorite treatment and exclusive influence over policymakers. The presence of both powerful and broadly represented business associations and labor unions and the existence of a government interested in coordinating their efforts-rather than letting itself be controlled by one group at the expense of the others-should help in the realization of the best growth path. Thus, institutional reform that empowers societal groups and enables them to defend their interests as well as fights all forms of corruption should lead to the realization of a more prosperous and equitable industrial development, with the “re-industrialization” of the developed world being no exception. The technological and social challenges of intensive automation and digitalization accompanying the fourth industrial revolution make the envisaged institutional reform more urgent.

This paper is introducing a novel theoretical framework for studying the effect of state-society relations, particularly SBLR, on the industrial growth paths of developed countries. It integrates three important bodies of literature in order to build a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of state-society relations and their economic consequences. These are the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC), State-Business Relations (SBR) and Industrial Relations. The SBLR framework differentiates between tycoons and entrepreneurs, an important distinction that often goes unnoticed. Different SBLR categories or modes are introduced, depending on levels of coordination and power relations between the actors. It is proposed in this research that the effect on growth paths goes beyond the simple dichotomy between CMEs and LMEs usually present in the literature of VoC and that power relations provide an essential complementary dimension in explaining this causality.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of innovation indicators: Internet usage, patent rights, innovation in exporting countries and innovation in the importing country on the export competitiveness of firms in the East African Community (EAC).

The study adopted the structural gravity model and the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood a nonlinear estimation method that was applied in STATA on balanced panel data from 2007 to 2018. Data were obtained from World Bank International Trade Center and World Bank development indicators.

Results show that innovation in the importing country, innovation in the exporting country and patent rights of exports are positive and significant predictors of export competitiveness in developing countries. While Internet usage is an insignificant predictor in the EAC.

There is a need to examine the complicated nature of the EAC economy to further this study's findings.

Exporting countries need to take deeper reforms as regards structural transformation to enable firms to integrate into the Global Value Chains (GVCs) to enable them to increase their productivity by reviewing the existing policies to match the changes in the market.

This study explains the complex dynamic interactions of technological innovation indicators in the EAC using quantitative data and that this interaction has an effect on the export competitiveness in import-oriented countries with less harmonization in their trade policies.

The study aims to examine the joint effects of foreign ownership (FO) and involvement in global value chains (GVCs) on the productivity performance of firms from a catching-up country (Poland) and a leader economy (Germany).

The authors use micro-level data on firms combined with several sector-level GVC participation measures. The authors investigate whether the link between productivity and the overall sectoral degree of involvement in global production structures depends on a firm's ownership. The authors verify the robustness of the obtained results by using an instrumental variables approach and weighted regression.

The results show that domestically owned firms are less productive than foreign ones, which is particularly true at low GVC participation levels. However, as GVC involvement increases, the FO productivity premium decreases, leading to productivity catching up between foreign and domestically owned firms. This mechanism is similar in Poland and Germany. However, in the leader country (Germany), the productivity performance of domestically owned firms is more stable along the distribution of GVC involvement.

This study contributes to the foreign direct investment (FDI)–productivity literature by comparing the catching-up and developed countries' perspectives and incorporating the productivity–GVC relationship into the FDI analysis. The authors show that the FO premium is not confined to the developing context but is also present in a leader country. Moreover, the link between productivity and the overall sectoral degree of involvement in global production structures depends on a firm's ownership.

The entire world is now witnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is indeed altering the lives of the many in both developing and developed countries. Massive digital transformations are affecting the economies of those countries and are bringing with them many promised merits, as well as many challenges to face. This paper aims to examine the relationship between digital transformation (as a one facet of the fourth revolution and AI trends) on one side, and economic development, labor productivity and employment on the other side.

The paper analyzes different indices of digital transformation, and then uses the Digital Evolution Index (DEI) to study those relationships in a group of developing countries using feasible generalized least squares method (FGLS).

The results show a positive relationship between the digital transformation index and economic development, labor productivity and job employment. Females seem to gain more from digital transformation compared to males, as suggested by the positive relation with the first and the insignificant relation with the latter. The relationship with vulnerable employment is not significant; more evidence is still needed to judge whether digital transformation will have an impact upon the vulnerable employees in the economy.

The paper focused on the impact of digital transformation upon total aggregate employment. Future research is still needed to examine the impact upon the structure of the labor market and the shift of occupations.

The paper aims to add to in the literature regarding the relationship between digital transformation, economic development, employment and productivity in the developing world. The implications of those relationships are of significant importance to policymakers regarding how much support should be given to encourage the digital transformation. At the same time, it shall also indicate how much social support policies are required – if any – to lessen the negative impact of digital transformation on the vulnerable groups inside the country. Another contribution is using a single composite index for digital transformation that is comparable across the chosen set of developing countries, instead of using single indices each capturing a different dimension of digital transformation.

The aim of this study was to investigate how the productivity spillover effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Latin American economies are manifested. Specifically, the paper sought to identify the role of foreign presence and government intervention through an industrial policy on total factor productivity in Latin American countries.

The analyses in this study were performed in two stages. The first step consisted of decomposing the total factor productivity growth, in technical efficiency change (EC) and technological efficiency change (TC), using the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI). In the second stage of this research, the specific EC and TC indexes of each country – obtained with the MPI – are used alternately as a dependent variable in a regression analysis with dynamic panel data. The variables were collected from the World Development Indicators database, available in the World Bank database, and cover the period from 1994 to 2014.

FDI has contributed to not only the catch-up effect – i.e. to continuous improvements in production processes and products using the same technology – but also in terms of productivity, due to technological innovations and the frontier-shift effect. Industrial policies, such as the FDI attraction, when established in isolation, are not able to contribute to the generation of productivity spillovers, measured in terms of technical and technological efficiency.

The limitation of the present study lies precisely in the nature of data aggregation that actually limits a more in-depth analysis of the object of study. The available data set for the analysis in this study does not provide a detailed examination of the domestic corporations’ characteristics, the sectors and motivations of multinational corporations of each one of the analyzed economies.

The outcomes of this research present several practical implications, as its development is based on the recognition that productivity is essential for the development of a country. It remains the Achilles' heel of the Latin American economies, and therefore, it is necessary and essential to move toward a change in its development model and, more specifically, in its industrial policies, with a focus on investment and innovation to achieve the new sustainable development objectives. Among the main challenges presented to governments in the region is the emergence of policies aimed at establishing a sustainable development path through industrial policies capable of accelerating productivity growth.

The evidence presented in this study highlights the importance of better understanding the real effects of state intervention through the use of industrial policy instruments and how they affect foreigners’ investment decisions, as the lack of clear industrial policy orientation that is systematically integrated with MNEs’ operations may result in economic development opportunities below the ideal.

The research results corroborate the foundations of spillover effects theory and with the recognition that the intensity of the effect of the foreign participation on the performance of economies will depend on the absorption capacity of host economies.

Under the circumstance that the development of developing countries is a major issue that has long been of concern to Marxist scholars, the research is focused on the category of development benefit, which Xi Jinping has mentioned many times.

Based on the Marxist theory of international value, the authors of this paper indicate that development benefit is the result of developing countries' consistently increasing labor productivity, reducing squandering in labor and transforming more labor into real value, and thus the fundamental cause of unequal development in international economics turns from the field of circulation to the area of production.

Also, the authors summarize China's experience of obtaining the development benefit and China's development path featuring common development and criticized the comparative advantage of mainstream Western economics, revealed the path of dependency development represented by mainstream Western economics.

Finally, the authors analyze the essence of the economy and trade conflict between China and the US and the respective strategic goals of the two countries and provide an outlook on the contest between the two roads of development and the evolutionary trend of the relationship between developed and developing countries.

Labour productivity in construction has fallen behind other industries in most of the world and has declined continuously for decades. Although several scholarly research projects have been conducted to salvage the prevalent low labour productivity in construction, contractors in the construction industry have continued to grapple with the devastating impact of low productivity. The purpose of this study is to determine key areas of focus necessary to promote productivity growth in construction.

Bibliometric and scientometric assessments were conducted to map the existing construction labour productivity (CLP) studies and establish key focus areas in the research domain. The keywords “Construction Productivity” OR “Construction Labour Productivity” OR “Construction Labor Productivity” OR “Construction Worker Productivity”.

Emerging trends in the CLP research field are reported. The study also determined the most productive authors and collaboration among authors, most productive journals, most active regions and publications with the highest impact in CLP research.

Documents published in the Scopus database were considered for analysis because of the wider coverage of the database. Journal and conference articles written in English language represent the inclusion criteria, while articles in press, review, book chapters, editorial, erratum, note, short survey and data paper were excluded from analysis. The study is also limited to documents published from 2012 to 2021.

The study brought to the awareness of the industry practitioners and other construction stakeholders, the key knowledge areas that are critical to promoting productivity growth in construction.

Except bibliometric analysis, previous research studies have used different approaches to investigate productivity in construction. The study presented future research directions through the emerging knowledge areas identified in the study.

This paper aims to examine the competitiveness trends and rankings of the Irish dairy sector at the farm and trade levels, relative to selected European Union (EU) Member States, in the context of the removal of the EU milk quota in 2015.

Competitiveness indicators including partial productivity measures and accountancy-based indicators were used for farm competitiveness, and net export market share and normalised revealed comparative advantage (NRCA) were used for export competitiveness.

Amongst the countries examined, Ireland had the highest growth in partial productivity indicators and was ranked first with the lowest total costs and cash costs per kg of milk solids post-quota. However, the total economic cost sub-components showed that Irish dairy farmers had high opportunity costs for owned land and labour. While Irish dairy products such as butter and powders have demonstrated growth potential in competitiveness post-quota with Irish butter and whey ranked in top three relative to other countries, other products, i.e. cheese and liquid milk have declined in competitiveness according to key export competitiveness indicators used.

The challenge for Irish dairy farmers is how to mitigate relatively high land and labour costs, which can limit farm competitiveness in the long run. The key players in the Irish dairy industry can now better position themselves in the global dairy market, recognizing the competitiveness dynamics of the different dairy products and their competitors. Policy implications and further areas of research have been identified to help improve the overall competitiveness position. It is surprising that Irish butter is a leader in the EU, yet not much research has been done to understand the market dynamics of this sector.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to use both farm and export competitiveness measures to analyse the Irish dairy industry relative to other countries in the context of quota abolition. Unlike previous studies on dairy export competitiveness, this study has disaggregated the processed dairy products, which allowed for the ranking of countries and comparability across countries using NRCA.