IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fpr/nsspwp/24.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Structural change in the economy of Nigeria

Author

Listed:
  • Adeyinka, Adedeji
  • Salau, Sheu
  • Vollrath, Dietrich

Abstract

We document that structural change accounts for approximately one-fifth of the total change in labor productivity in Nigeria between 1996 and 2009. Labor moved out of the agricultural and wholesale and retail trade sectors into manufacturing, transportation and communications, business services, and general services. While structural change did occur in this period, significant gains to aggregate labor productivity are still available from further shifts of labor to higher-productivity sectors. We discuss the factors limiting structural change, which include poor agricultural productivity, insufficient infrastruc-ture to support high productivity sectors, and a lack of appropriate skills in the labor force. We calculate that the gains still available to Nigeria from structural change are equivalent to an increase in value-added of 25 percent, given the existing productivity levels of sectors in 2009.

Suggested Citation

  • Adeyinka, Adedeji & Salau, Sheu & Vollrath, Dietrich, 2013. "Structural change in the economy of Nigeria," NSSP working papers 24, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    • Handle: RePEc:fpr:nsspwp:24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/153557
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gollin, Douglas & Parente, Stephen L. & Rogerson, Richard, 2007. "The food problem and the evolution of international income levels," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1230-1255, May.
    2. Areendam Chanda & Carl‐Johan Dalgaard, 2008. "Dual Economies and International Total Factor Productivity Differences: Channelling the Impact from Institutions, Trade, and Geography," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 75(300), pages 629-661, November.
    3. Mike Waugh & David Lagakos & Doug Gollin, 2011. "The Agricultural Productivity Gap in Developing Countries," 2011 Meeting Papers 1397, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. World Bank, 2008. "Ethiopia - Agriculture and Rural Development Public Expenditure Review 1997/98–2005/06," World Bank Publications - Reports 7985, The World Bank Group.
    5. Vollrath, Dietrich, 2009. "How important are dual economy effects for aggregate productivity?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 325-334, March.
    6. World Bank, 2008. "Nigeria - Agriculture Public Expenditure Review," World Bank Publications - Reports 7923, The World Bank Group.
    7. Francisco Alvarez-Cuadrado & Markus Poschke, 2011. "Structural Change Out of Agriculture: Labor Push versus Labor Pull," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 127-158, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sam Jones & Finn Tarp, 2015. "Understanding Mozambique's growth experience through an employment lens," WIDER Working Paper Series 109, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Sam Jones & Finn Tarp, 2015. "Understanding Mozambique's growth experience through an employment lens," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-109, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Forson, Joseph Ato & Opoku, Rosemary Afrakomah & Peng, Zhen, 2017. "Innovation, Institutions and Economic Growth in Sub-Sahara Africa – an IV Estimation of a Panel Threshold Model," MPRA Paper 103063, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Mar 2018.
    4. repec:kqi:journl:2017-1-4 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Onikosi-Alliyu Saidat O. & Oyeniran Ishola Wasiu, 2019. "Determinants of Structural Changes in Manufacturing Sector in Nigeria," Academic Journal of Economic Studies, Faculty of Finance, Banking and Accountancy Bucharest,"Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian University Bucharest, vol. 5(1), pages 36-41, March.
    6. Prakash Kumar Shrestha, 2017. "Economic Liberalization in Nepal: Evaluating the Changes in Economic Structure, Employment and Productivity," Journal of Development Innovations, KarmaQuest International, vol. 1(1), pages 60-83, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tasso Adamopoulos & Diego Restuccia, 2014. "The Size Distribution of Farms and International Productivity Differences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(6), pages 1667-1697, June.
    2. Üngör, Murat, 2013. "De-agriculturalization as a result of productivity growth in agriculture," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 141-145.
    3. Priyo Asad Karim Khan, 2012. "Sector-Specific Capital, Labor Market Distortions and Cross-Country Income Differences: A Two-Sector General Equilibrium Approach," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-52, March.
    4. Alvarez-Cuadrado, Francisco & Long, Ngo & Poschke, Markus, 2017. "Capital-labor substitution, structural change and growth," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), September.
    5. Blanco, Cesar & Raurich, Xavier, 2022. "Agricultural composition and labor productivity," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    6. Le, Kien, 2020. "Land use restrictions, misallocation in agriculture, and aggregate productivity in Vietnam," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    7. Dietrich Vollrath, 2013. "Measuring Aggregate Agricultural Labor Effort in Dual Economies," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 3(1), pages 39-58, June.
    8. Douglas Gollin & Remi Jedwab & Dietrich Vollrath, 2016. "Urbanization with and without industrialization," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 35-70, March.
    9. Emerick, Kyle, 2018. "Agricultural productivity and the sectoral reallocation of labor in rural India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 488-503.
    10. Diarra, Lacina, 2020. "Rural off-farm employment and agricultural production efficiency: evidence from Tazania," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304600, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    11. Cesar Blanco & Xavier Raurich, 2018. "Agricultural Composition, Structural Change and Labor Productivity," 2018 Meeting Papers 772, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Dietrich Vollrath, 2009. "The dual economy in long-run development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 287-312, December.
    13. Eberhardt, Markus & Vollrath, Dietrich, 2018. "The Effect of Agricultural Technology on the Speed of Development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 483-496.
    14. Mike Waugh & David Lagakos & Doug Gollin, 2011. "The Agricultural Productivity Gap in Developing Countries," 2011 Meeting Papers 1397, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    15. Aimable Nsabimana & Patricia Funjika, 2019. "Mobile phone use, productivity and labour market in Tanzania," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-71, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    16. Sibabrata Das & Alex Mourmouras & Peter Rangazas, 2018. "Wage and Fertility Gaps in Dual Economies," Springer Texts in Business and Economics, in: Economic Growth and Development, edition 2, chapter 7, pages 191-227, Springer.
    17. Jung, Yeonha, 2020. "The long reach of cotton in the US South: Tenant farming, mechanization, and low-skill manufacturing," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    18. Van Dijk, Michiel, 2013. "Productivity growth at the sectoral level: measurement and projections," Conference papers 332295, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    19. Cai, Wenbiao, 2010. "Skill Investment, Farm Size Distribution and Agricultural Productivity," MPRA Paper 26439, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Jedwab, Remi & Vollrath, Dietrich, 2015. "Urbanization without growth in historical perspective," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-21.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    structural adjustment; agricultural productivity; labour productivity; Nigeria; Western Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; Africa;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fpr:nsspwp:24. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.