Outcome of capital investment on labor productivity in agriculture sector of Ukraine

Ukraine's agricultural sector accounts for 17% of the country's GDP and is continuously growing. For six consecutive years (2013-2018), Ukraine harvested over 60 million tons of grain annually, and 2018 export of ag commodities reached $18.6 billion. (State, 2020). The anticipated land reform envisions lifting the moratorium on the agricultural land sale, which should encourage capital investments in ag. The article analyzes the trends of investment opportunities in the Ukrainian ag sector for the last decade. The regression analysis of labor productivity with variables of fixed capital-worker ratio and yield of grain confirmed that the function of labor productivity depended on the value of fixed capital per worker. As the U.S. investment in ag machinery export to Ukraine plays a significant role, we evaluated its effect on the current level of labor productivity in the Ukrainian agribusiness, comparing it with the U.S. farming outcome.

Engineering Orders: Their Use in Forecasting

For the past four years estimates of home and foreign orders have been published which, by and large, cover the capital goods sector of the engineering industry. (This is the sector which produces to order.) Home deliveries from this sector make up a large part of industry's investment in plant and machinery; export deliveries have usually been more buoyant than total exports. If these orders figures could be used to predict turning-points in home and export deliveries of engineering products, this would be a helpful additional forecasting tool.