Capital Investment, Financial Viability, and Sustainable Regional Agricultural Performance: Evidence from a Verified Regional Panel

Capital investment and the financial viability of agricultural producers are central to the economic pillar of sustainable agricultural development, yet regional evidence from verified administrative data remains limited. This study examines regional agricultural production performance in 20 Ukrainian oblasts over 2020–2025 using a balanced panel of 120 region-year observations. Performance is measured as the log geometric mean of five physical outputs: grain, oilseeds, milk, livestock liveweight for slaughter, and eggs. A pre-estimation data-consistency audit excluded agricultural land area and the number of agricultural producers, whose annual values were largely interpolated and strongly collinear. Fixed Effects estimates show that capital investment (β = 0.131, p < 0.001) and the share of profitable enterprises (β = 0.005, p < 0.05) are positively associated with production performance, while the 2022–2025 period is associated with an average conditional reduction of approximately 7.0%. Event-study estimates reveal a non-monotonic trajectory, with the largest reduction in 2024 (approximately −9.9%). The results remain stable under year fixed effects, Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, leave-one-regressor-out tests, cluster bootstrap intervals, dynamic specifications, structural-break validation, and placebo tests. The investment association also holds across alternative constructions of the composite indicator and in all macro-regions, whereas the association with financial viability is weaker, depends mainly on livestock outputs, and is absent in the central grain-producing oblasts. Because reverse causality cannot be excluded in this observational design, the estimates are interpreted as robust within-region associations rather than causal effects. The findings identify investment capacity as a robust correlate, and enterprise financial viability as a regionally conditioned correlate, of the economic-productive dimension of sustainable regional agricultural development and highlight data-quality auditing as a prerequisite for evidence-based policy.