Comparisons of Capital Input in OECD Agriculture, 1973-2011

This paper provides a farm sector comparison of relative levels of capital input for 17 OECD countries for the period 1973-2011, with an explicit distinction between land and depreciable assets. Methodologically, we adopt the constant efficiency model to derive capital services from capital stocks and construct the purchasing power parity between countries for crosscountry comparison. Our estimates show that, after accounting for cyclical fluctuation in the relative price of capital inputs, fifteen of the sixteen countries in the comparison had higher levels of capital input relative to the United States in 2011 than at the beginning of the sample period in 1973. Moreover, our analysis shows that increases in relative capital use on farms in OECD countries were accompanied by change in the structure of the capital input, away from land and towards depreciable capital items.