How productive are academic researchers in agriculture-related sciences? The Mexican case
René Rivera, José Luis Sampedro, Gabriela Dutrenit, Javier Mario Ekboir & Alexandre Vera Cruz
#2009-038
This paper explores the effect of commercial farmers-academic
researchers linkages on research productivity in fields related to
agriculture. Using original data and econometric analysis, our findings
show a positive and significant relationship between intensive linkages
with a small number of commercial farmers and research productivity,
when this is defined as publications in ISI journals. This evidence
seems contrary to other contributions that argue that strong ties with
the business sector reduce research productivity and distort the
original purposes of university, i.e., conducting basic research and
preparing highly-trained professionals. When research productivity is
defined more broadly adding other types of research outputs, the
relationship is also positive and significant confirming the argument
that close ties between public research institutions and businesses
foster the emergence of new ideas that can be translated into
innovations with commercial and/or social value. Another important
finding is that researchers in public institutions produce several types
of research outputs; therefore, measuring research productivity only by
published ISI papers misses important dimensions of research activities.
Keywords: agriculture sector, research productivity, university-business
sector interaction
JEL codes: 031, 032, Q16, Q18
UNU-MERIT Working Papers
ISSN 1871-9872