Do linkages between farmers and academic researchers influence research productivity? Evidence from Mexico

We explore the effect of linkages between farmers and academic researchers on research productivity in fields related to agriculture. We found a positive and significant relationship between intensive linkages with a few farmers and research productivity, when this is defined as publications in ISI journals. This evidence contradicts other contributions that argue that strong ties with businesses reduce research productivity and distort the original purposes of university. 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 result in valuable innovations. Another 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.