CAPACITY MEASUREMENT IN THE U.S. AGRICULTURAL AND NONAGRICULTURAL SECTORS: A LITERATURE REVIEW

In an examination of the literature of agricultural economics from the fifties on, the author presents several definitions of production capacity of U.S. agriculture. No satisfactory measure of such capacity exists nor is there a viable, generally acceptable definition of the term. Literature of the nonagricultural sector contains some appropriate definitions and methodologies associated with capacity measurement. After discussing and evaluating several of these, the author suggests that some of them may provide help in making agricultural methods more useful