Selection, Agriculture, and Cross-Country Productivity Differences

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lagakos, David; Waugh, Michael E.
• 署名单位: Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe; New York University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.103.2.948
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 948-980
• 关键词: self-selection; LABOR; industrialization; institutions; fertility; geography; CHILDREN; stature; HEALTH

摘要

Cross-country labor productivity differences are larger in agriculture than in non-agriculture. We propose a new explanation for these patterns in which the self-selection of heterogeneous workers determines sector productivity. We formalize our theory in a general-equilibrium Roy model in which preferences feature a subsistence food requirement. In the model, subsistence requirements induce workers that are relatively unproductive at agricultural work to nonetheless select into the agriculture sector in poor countries. When parameterized, the model predicts that productivity differences are roughly twice as large in agriculture as non-agriculture even when countries differ by an economy-wide efficiency term that affects both sectors uniformly.