In most poor countries, large majorities of the population live in rural areas and earn their livelihoods primarily from agriculture. Many rural people in the developing world are poor, and conversely, most of the world's poor people inhabit rural areas. Agriculture also accounts for a...

This paper describes an emerging literature in economics that aims to merge macro issues of structural change and growth with micro data and analysis. This literature focuses on a set of related patterns of change that accompany the processes of growth and development. Traditionally, the focus...

This paper draws on cross-country census data to study how agricultural productivity gaps have evolved over the last four decades. We find little tendency for gaps to decline on average despite global decreases in agricultural employment shares. We analyze the dynamics of agricultural...