Agriculture and aggregate productivity: A quantitative cross-country analysis

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Restuccia, Diego; Yang, Dennis Tao; Zhua, Xiaodong
• 署名单位: University of Toronto; Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University; Chinese University of Hong Kong
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2007.11.006
• 发表日期: 2008
• 页码: 234-250
• 关键词: productivity; international comparisons; agriculture; intermediate inputs; barriers; Two-sector model

摘要

A decomposition of aggregate labor productivity based on internationally comparable data reveals that a high share of employment and low labor productivity in agriculture are mainly responsible for low aggregate productivity in poor countries. Using a two-sector general-equilibrium model, we show that differences in economy-wide productivity, barriers to modern intermediate inputs in agriculture, and barriers in the labor market generate large cross-country differences in the share of employment and labor productivity in agriculture. The model implies a factor difference of 10.8 in aggregate labor productivity between the richest and the poorest 5% of the countries in the world, leaving the unexplained factor at 3.2. Overall. this two-sector framework performs much better than a single-sector growth model in explaining observed differences in international productivity. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.