IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed011/1087.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why is Agricultural Labor Productivity so Low in the United States?

Author

Listed:
  • Todd Schoellman

    (Arizona State University)

  • Berthold Herrendorf

    (Arizona State University)

Abstract

A big question in development economics is why developing countries are so unproductive in agriculture. This question is hard to answer because of limited data. In this project, we explore what we can learn from agriculture in US states where we have rich data. Focusing on US states has the advantage that there are no major barriers or institutional differences. We provide evidence that there are large labor productivity gaps between nonagriculture and nonagriculture; in some US states the difference between the two is larger than a factor of five. We show that these gaps are not likely to be the result of imperfect measurement. We also show that sectoral differences in human capital and capital shares account for most of these labor productivity gaps.

Suggested Citation

  • Todd Schoellman & Berthold Herrendorf, 2011. "Why is Agricultural Labor Productivity so Low in the United States?," 2011 Meeting Papers 1087, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed011:1087
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2011/paper_1087.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tasso Adamopoulos & Diego Restuccia, 2014. "The Size Distribution of Farms and International Productivity Differences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(6), pages 1667-1697, June.
    2. Caselli, Francesco, 2005. "Accounting for Cross-Country Income Differences," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 9, pages 679-741, Elsevier.
    3. Douglas Gollin & Stephen L. Parente & Richard Rogerson, 2004. "Farm Work, Home Work, and International Productivity Differences," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(4), pages 827-850, October.
    4. Restuccia, Diego & Yang, Dennis Tao & Zhu, Xiaodong, 2008. "Agriculture and aggregate productivity: A quantitative cross-country analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 234-250, March.
    5. Caselli, Francesco, 2005. "Accounting for cross-country income differences," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 5266, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones, 1999. "Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 83-116.
    7. Mike Waugh & David Lagakos & Doug Gollin, 2011. "The Agricultural Productivity Gap in Developing Countries," 2011 Meeting Papers 1397, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Caselli, Francesco, 2005. "Accounting for cross-country income differences," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 3567, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Banerjee, Abhijit V. & Duflo, Esther, 2005. "Growth Theory through the Lens of Development Economics," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 7, pages 473-552, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mike Waugh & David Lagakos & Doug Gollin, 2011. "The Agricultural Productivity Gap in Developing Countries," 2011 Meeting Papers 1397, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Mike Waugh & Ahmed Mobarak & David Lagakos, 2016. "Urban-Rural Wage Gaps in Developing Countries: Spatial Misallocation or Efficient Sorting?," 2016 Meeting Papers 1032, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Barry Eichengreen, 2019. "Trade Policy and the Macroeconomy," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 67(1), pages 4-23, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cai, Wenbiao, 2010. "Skill Investment, Farm Size Distribution and Agricultural Productivity," MPRA Paper 26439, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2017. "The Causes and Costs of Misallocation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 151-174, Summer.
    3. Chen, Chaoran, 2020. "Technology adoption, capital deepening, and international productivity differences," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    4. Berthold Herrendorf & Todd Schoellman, 2015. "Why is Measured Productivity so Low in Agriculture?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(4), pages 1003-1022, October.
    5. Mike Waugh & David Lagakos & Doug Gollin, 2011. "The Agricultural Productivity Gap in Developing Countries," 2011 Meeting Papers 1397, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Michael E. Waugh & David Lagakos & Douglas Gollin, 2011. "Why Don't Developing Countries Import More Food?," 2011 Meeting Papers 1367, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Gottlieb, Charles & Grobovšek, Jan, 2019. "Communal land and agricultural productivity," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 135-152.
    8. Diego Restuccia, 2019. "Misallocation and aggregate productivity across time and space," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(1), pages 5-32, February.
    9. Berthold Herrendorf & Todd Schoellman, 2017. "Wages, Human Capital, and Structural Transformation," CESifo Working Paper Series 6426, CESifo.
    10. Dominick Bartelme & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2015. "Linkages and Economic Development," NBER Working Papers 21251, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Cai, Wenbiao, 2015. "Structural change accounting with labor market distortions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 54-64.
    12. Dorinet, Elizavetta & Jouvet, Pierre-André & Wolfersberger, Julien, 2021. "Is the agricultural sector cursed too? Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    13. David Lagakos & Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak & Michael E. Waugh, 2023. "The Welfare Effects of Encouraging Rural–Urban Migration," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(3), pages 803-837, May.
    14. Córdoba, Juan Carlos & Ripoll, Marla, 2009. "Agriculture and aggregation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 110-112, October.
    15. Harald Fadinger & Christian Ghiglino & Mariya Teteryatnikova, 2015. "Productivity, Networks and Input-Output Structure," 2015 Meeting Papers 624, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Jones, C.I., 2016. "The Facts of Economic Growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 3-69, Elsevier.
    17. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2013. "Misallocation and productivity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 1-10, January.
    18. Lutz Hendricks & Todd Schoellman, 2018. "Human Capital and Development Accounting: New Evidence from Wage Gains at Migration," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 665-700.
    19. Douglas Gollin & David Lagakos & Michael E. Waugh, 2014. "The Agricultural Productivity Gap," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(2), pages 939-993.
    20. Fadinger, Harald & Ghiglino, Christian & Teteryatnikova, Mariya, 2015. "Income differences and input-output structure," Working Papers 15-11, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:red:sed011:1087. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.