WHY IS AGRICULTURAL LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY HIGHER IN SOME COUNTRIES THAN OTHERS?

Agriculture productivity varies dramatically in different regions of the world. Using recent theories of economic growth and new data sets (Larson and al., 1999) as a guide, this study finds some empirical regularities between agricultural labour productivity growth, investment and education, as also for environmental factors, for 44 countries during the period 1980-1993. We find strong evidence that where agricultural investment and educated people rates are higher, agricultural labour productivity grows faster. Secondly, geographical factors as well as freer trade influence growth. Finally, we find evidence of conditional convergence, which means that cross-country agricultural productivity does not converge to the same level of steady state but that productivity in each country converges to its own long-run equilibrium.