The agricultural productivity gap: Informality matters

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Jat, Rajveer; Ramaswami, Bharat
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Riverside; Ashoka University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103617
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: Agricultural productivity gap; Informal sector; INDIA

摘要

The measured agricultural productivity gap (APG) in developing countries typically compares agriculture with the entire non-farm economy, implicitly treating the latter as homogeneous. In developing countries, most nonfarm employment is informal, concentrated in small, unregistered enterprises with low productivity. This paper compares the productivity of agriculture to the informal and formal non-farm sectors in India. Using Indian sectoral data from the India KLEMS database linked with nationally representative labor surveys, we decompose the non-farm economy into formal and informal segments and adjust productivity measures for differences in hours worked, human capital, and labor's share of value-added. We find that the APG is almost entirely driven by the small formal non-farm sector. The gap with the informal sector is negligible. Between 63 and 75 % of nonfarm workers are in informal employment dominated industries that are not more productive than agriculture. These results reframe the APG as a formal-informal divide.