Does Patient Capital Facilitate the Improvement of Agricultural Enterprises’ Total Factor Productivity?—Evidence From Chinese Agricultural Enterprise Data

With the growing global emphasis on agricultural development models and the need to improve efficiency amid tightening resource constraints, enhancing the TFP (total factor productivity) of agricultural enterprises has become crucial. The emergence of patient capital offers new opportunities in this context. This study investigates the impact of patient capital on agricultural enterprises’ TFP using a sample of 104 Chinese A-share listed agricultural companies from 2013 to 2023. The findings reveal a significant positive correlation between patient capital and agricultural enterprises’ TFP, with this positive relationship following the law of diminishing marginal returns. The conclusions remain robust across a series of tests, including instrumental variable estimation, variable substitution, and lagged-variable approaches. Mechanism analysis demonstrates that governance efficiency and uncertainty perception serve as mediating channels between patient capital and agricultural enterprises’ TFP. This research provides empirical evidence on the micro-level mechanisms by which patient capital supports agricultural transformation and offers valuable insights for refining agricultural financial policies.