Mid Sweden University

According to previous research and data from central bureau of statistics in Sweden the private service sector in Sweden is growing and employment in agriculture, forestry and fishing has declined since the 1969s. Whit this knowledge it would be interesting to investigate the agricultural sector. The aim of this thesis is therefore to study the development of production in the agricultural sector. The Swedish agriculture is regulated to WU’s common agricultural policy and therefore the study is divided into two time periods, one before the membership of the EU and one after the membership of the EU to see if there is a significant difference. The data collection includes literatures with previous studies in this area as well as historical data of the Swedish production, capital and labor. To measure this, a theory is required that shows the relationship between input of goods and the outcome of the production process, in this study the theory is the Cobb-Douglas production function. With the production function as a starting point, a comparison between periods can also be made. Dependent and independent variables have been selected and regression analyzes, and t-tests analyze the relationship between the variables. For the dependent variable, the value ofproduction is chosen and for the independent variables the value of labor and the value of capital are used. The results show that there is no significant in the analysis of how production has looked like over the entire period 1980–2018. By contrast, the study shows that there is a significant t-test in which the period before EU membership is compared with the period after EU membership, which means that this quantitative value corresponds to the value that is most likely the value if the null hypothesis cannot be accepted. The recommendation for future research is to use more input variables tosee if there is a change in result.