Spatial determinants of productivity growth on agri‐food Spanish firms: a comparison between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms

Abstract

This study analyses the effect of the spatial factor, location, and interaction effects among peer companies, on the productivity growth of agri-food companies in Spain. With this aim, we build a productivity growth index and apply a multiequational Seemingly Unrelated Regression on a sample of 344 Spanish cooperatives and investor-owned firms for the period 2010-2012. Our findings show that agri-food firms are influenced by spatial factors finding interesting differences between cooperatives and investor-owned firms. With regard to the geographical location, cooperatives in the western of Spain show higher productivity growth rates, whereas investor-owned firms in the northeast of Spain present better results. The interaction effect among closer peer companies is also a relevant factor to determine the productivity growth in agri-food companies. This factor is more relevant for cooperatives than for investor-owned firms.JEL classifications: D24, Q13, C31, R11, D22, P13

Exploring firm-level and sectoral variation in total factor productivity (TFP)

“…Hoogstra and van Dijk (2004) contributed to the literature by documenting an indisputable role of location factors and growth and firm performance. Other studies on productivity have also highlighted the role of spatial variation (Cie slik et al, 2019;Giannakis and Bruggeman, 2015;Haldane, 2017;Mart ınez-Victoria et al, 2018). It is widely acknowledged that firms are dependent on external influences for their functioning (Henley, 2018) and are influenced by spatially differentiating factors, such as geographical opportunities and constraints, resources, spillover factors (Carlsson and Dahlberg, 2003) and public policy (Dvoulet y et al, 2020(Dvoulet y et al, , 2021Harris and Moffat, 2020;Pickernell et al, 2013).…”

“…Within the international trade theory, the studies usually confirm that the exporter status has significant contribution for firm-level productivity heterogeneity (Bravo-Ortega et al, 2014;Manso Machado, 2019;Nunes et al, 2020;Salomon and Jin, 2008). Several studies also examine the spatial dimension of the differences in firm-level productivity (Cie slik et al, 2019;Mart ınez-Victoria et al, 2018) or productivity variations across industries (Biatour et al, 2011;Botri c et al, 2017). Although the existing research literature related to this topic is very large in scale and scope, robust empirical analyses on the firm-and sectoral-level productivity variations, based on large longitudinal and representative datasets, are still sparse, as well as studies that examine the long-term relationships between economic variables and productivity development (Erken et al, 2018).…”

Do Corporate Governance Recommendations Apply to U.S. Agricultural Cooperatives?

“…Moreover, as the (dual) function of cooperatives (i.e., profitability and member benefits) is distinct from that of IOFs [10][11][12][13], the same governance recommendations may not apply and alternative performance measures may be appropriate. Researchers take various creative approaches to addressing this aspect of cooperative performance, such as focusing on farm-level patron-member performance [14], using relative productivity measures [15] or computing performance indices from survey responses [16]. Franken and Cook [17] demonstrate that factor analysis [18] of survey and accounting data offers a representative measure of the overall performance of cooperatives.…”

La diversificación geográfica en los destinos de exportación de las empresas y cooperativas agroalimentarias. Influencia de los factores externos para su selección

“…Juliá et al, 2012;Moyano, Puig y Bruque, 2008), así como en la productividad de las cooperativas (e.g. Martínez-Victoria, Maté Sánchez-Val y Arcas-Lario, 2018;Aldaz y Millán, 2003).…”