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The Quest for Productivity Growth in Agriculture and Manufacturing

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Author Info
María Dolores Guilló
Fidel Pérez Sebastián

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Abstract

We develop a theory to explain the transition from stagnation to modern growth. We focus on the forces that shaped the evolution of total factor productivity in agriculture and manufacturing across history. More specifically, we build a multisector model of endogenous technical-change and economic growth. We consider an expanding-variety setup with rising labor specialization and two different R&D technologies, one for agriculture and another for manufacturing. As a consequence, total factor productivity in the model can increase via two different channels. First, population growth allows larger levels of specialization of land and labor in the economy that bring efficiency gains. This type of productivity improvement is capital saving, but can not generate sustained growth. Technical change is also possible by investing in R&D. Unlike specialization, new technologies generated in this way are land and labor augmenting, and are the key to modern growth. In the model, the economy has not incentives to invest in R&D until a minimum knowledge base is available to researchers. This is in line with ideas contained in Mokyr (2005). To make possible the accumulation of this minimum knowledge base, we assume that learning-by-doing is the implicit underlying force that leads to specialization. However, land and labor specialization is based on knowledge whose nature differs in agriculture and in manufacturing. More specifically, whereas this knowledge is farm-specific in agriculture, mainly concern with the acquisition of uncodified information about local conditions of soil and whether, specialization in manufacturing is the result of general knowledge, mainly codified, that contributes at a larger extent to the knowledge base.

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Paper provided by DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade in its series DEGIT Conference Papers with number c011_005.

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Length: 15 pages
Date of creation: Jun 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:deg:conpap:c011_005

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Related research
Keywords: stagnation; modern growth; specialization; learning-by-doing; R&D; Knowledge base;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
O13 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
O14 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
O41 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Oded Galor, 2004. "From Stagnation to Growth: Unified Growth Theory," GE, Growth, Math methods 0409003, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
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  2. Stephen L. Parente & Edward C. Prescott, 2004. "A unified theory of the evolution of international income levels," Staff Report 333, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Marla Ripoll & Juan Carlos Cordoba, 2006. "Agriculture and Aggregation," Working Papers 371, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2008. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Mokyr, Joel, 2005. "Long-Term Economic Growth and the History of Technology," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 17, pages 1113-1180 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Bernard, Andrew B & Jones, Charles I, 1996. "Productivity across Industries and Countries: Time Series Theory and Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 135-46, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Goodfriend, Marvin & McDermott, John, 1995. "Early Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 116-33, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Diego Restuccia & Dennis Tao Yang & Xiaodong Zhu, 2003. "Agriculture and Aggregate Productivity: A Quantitative Cross-Country Analysis," Working Papers diegor-03-01, University of Toronto, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  8. Charles I. Jones & John C. Williams, 1998. "Measuring The Social Return To R&D," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 113(4), pages 1119-1135, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Acemoglu, Daron, 2002. "Directed Technical Change," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 69(4), pages 781-809, October.
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  10. Douglas Gollin & Stephen L. Parente & Richard Rogerson, 2004. "The Food Problem and the Evolution of International Income Levels," Working Papers 899, Economic Growth Center, Yale University. [Downloadable!]
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  11. Daron Acemoglu, 2003. "Labor- And Capital-Augmenting Technical Change," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(1), pages 1-37, 03. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Douglas Gollin & Stephen Parente & Richard Rogerson, 2002. "The Role of Agriculture in Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 160-164, May. [Downloadable!]
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