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Farm Work, Home Work and International Productivity Differences

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Agriculture's share of economic activity is known to vary inversely with a country's level of development. This paper examines whether extensions of the neoclassical growth model can account for some important sectoral patterns observed in a current cross-section of countries and in the time series data for currently rich countries. We find that a straightforward agricultural extension of the neoclassical growth model restricted to match U.S. observations fails to account for important aspects of the cross-country data. We then introduce a version of the growth model with home production, and we show that this model performs much better.

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  • Douglas Gollin & Stephen Parente & Richard Rogerson, 2001. "Farm Work, Home Work and International Productivity Differences," Department of Economics Working Papers 2002-08, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    • Handle: RePEc:wil:wileco:2002-08
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O41 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
    • O0 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - General

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