Plowing Through the Data

In this paper we report on work that has aimed at measuring and understanding the sources of productivity differences among firms and their changes over time. These issues have been investigated at the micro level, which is the decision-making level. The relationship between inputs and the economic environment is informed by an underlying economic model. The issues involved in the specification and estimation of production functions are related to the role played by errors in the production and optimization decisions. Under this general umbrella, the paper traces my interaction with the literature on some key subjects in production and supply. Turning to the macro level, we review subjects related to the analysis of agriculture as a sector of the economy and the determinants of agricultural growth. The incentives and constraints are affected by sector-specific and sector-neutral policies, by world prices, and by the implementation of new technology. The paper concludes with a review of empirical work on these subjects. How does one reflect on the outcome of a random walk? This in essence, is what I am setting out to do, and the easy way to do it would be to do what some of us do best, namely, talk about the past. It would have been more impressive if I could pretend to have followed my trajectory with the clarity of a crystal ball. A natural starting point in my case is high-school, where I took a turn in the direction of agriculture, revealing my convictions at the time. Eventually, as outlined below, I invested much of my research efforts in two main fields, production and agricultural growth, and they will be the main subject of this review. The two are not independent, and in both cases I have tried to understand what the data tell us. Situating my work in the rich literature was largely accomplished in Mundlak, (2000; 2001a), which allows me here to walk through my efforts without elaborating on all the pertinent work