REEVALUATING AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY GAPS WITH LONGITUDINAL MICRODATA

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hamory, Joan; Kleemans, Marieke; Li, Nicholas Y.; Miguel, Edward
• 署名单位: University of Oklahoma System; University of Oklahoma - Norman; University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1093/jeea/jvaa043
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 1522-1555
• 关键词: comparative advantage; migration; selection; wages; TECHNOLOGY; INEQUALITY; responses; unions

摘要

Recent research has pointed to large gaps in labor productivity between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in low-income countries, as well as between workers in rural and urban areas. Most estimates are based on national accounts or repeated cross-sections of microsurvey data, and as a result typically struggle to account for individual selection between sectors. This paper uses long-run individual-level panel data from two low-income countries (Indonesia and Kenya) to explore these gaps. Accounting for individual fixed effects leads to much smaller estimated productivity gains from moving into the non-agricultural sector (or urban areas), reducing estimated gaps by roughly 67%-92%. Furthermore, gaps do not emerge up to 5 years after a move between sectors. We evaluate whether these findings imply a re-assessment of the conventional wisdom regarding sectoral gaps, discuss how to reconcile them with existing cross-sectional estimates, and consider implications for the desirability of sectoral reallocation of labor.