IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15863.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Agriculture, Roads, and Economic Development in Uganda

Author

Listed:
  • Douglas Gollin
  • Richard Rogerson

Abstract

A large fraction of Uganda's population continues to earn a living from quasi-subsistence agriculture. This paper uses a static general equilibrium model to explore the relationships between high transportation costs, low productivity, and the size of the quasi-subsistence sector. We parameterize the model to replicate some key features of the Ugandan data, and we then perform a series of quantitative experiments. Our results suggest that the population in quasi-subsistence agriculture is highly sensitive both to agricultural productivity levels and to transportation costs. The model also suggests positive complementarities between improvements in agricultural productivity and transportation.

Suggested Citation

  • Douglas Gollin & Richard Rogerson, 2010. "Agriculture, Roads, and Economic Development in Uganda," NBER Working Papers 15863, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15863
    Note: PE PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15863.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    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. Shenggen Fan & Peter Hazell, 2001. "Returns to Public Investments in the Less-Favored Areas of India and China," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1217-1222.
    3. Dekle, Robert & Vandenbroucke, Guillaume, 2012. "A quantitative analysis of China's structural transformation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 119-135.
    4. Berthold Herrendorf & Arilton Teixeira, 2011. "Barriers To Entry And Development," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(2), pages 573-602, May.
    5. Fan, Shenggen & Chan-Kang, Connie, 2004. "Road development, economic growth, and poverty reduction in China," DSGD discussion papers 12, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    6. Gary D. Hansen & Edward C. Prescott, 2002. "Malthus to Solow," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1205-1217, September.
    7. Eswaran, Mukesh & Kotwal, Ashok, 1993. "A theory of real wage growth in LDCs," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 243-269, December.
    8. Echevarria, Cristina, 1997. "Changes in Sectoral Composition Associated with Economic Growth," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(2), pages 431-452, May.
    9. Goodfriend, Marvin & McDermott, John, 1998. "Industrial Development and the Convergence Question," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1277-1289, December.
    10. Dorosh, Paul & Wang, Hyoung-Gun & You, Liang & Schmidt, Emily, 2010. "Crop production and road connectivity in Sub-Saharan Africa : a spatial analysis," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5385, The World Bank.
    11. Robert Dekle & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2006. "A quantitative analysis of China’s structural transformation," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Jun.
    12. Gachassin, Marie & Najman, Boris & Raballand, Gael, 2010. "The impact of roads on poverty reduction : a case study of Cameroon," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5209, The World Bank.
    13. Berthold Herrendorf & James A. Schmitz & Arilton Teixeira, 2006. "How Important was the 19th Century Transportation Revolution for U.S. Development?," 2006 Meeting Papers 831, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    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. Kevin Donovan, 2011. "Risk, Farm Ownership, and International Productivity Differences," 2011 Meeting Papers 1088, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Herrendorf, Berthold & Rogerson, Richard & Valentinyi, Ákos, 2014. "Growth and Structural Transformation," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 6, pages 855-941, Elsevier.
    3. Qin, Yu & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2016. "The Road to Specialization in Agricultural Production: Evidence from Rural China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 1-16.
    4. Bah, El-hadj & Fang, Lei, 2015. "Impact of the business environment on output and productivity in Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 159-171.
    5. Stifel, David & Minten, Bart, 2017. "Market Access, Well-being, and Nutrition: Evidence from Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 229-241.
    6. Jan Willem Gunning & Pramila Krishnan & Andualem T Mengistu, 2018. "Fading Choice: Transport Costs and Variety in Consumer Goods," CSAE Working Paper Series 2018-05, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    7. Trevor Tombe, 2012. "The Missing Food Problem," Working Papers tt0060, Wilfrid Laurier University, Department of Economics, revised 2012.
    8. Girum Abebe & Stefano Caria & Marcel Fafchamps & Paolo Falco & Simon Franklin & Simon Quinn, 2016. "Curse of Anonymity or Tyranny of Distance? The Impacts of Job-Search Support in Urban Ethiopia," NBER Working Papers 22409, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Tombe, Trevor, 2011. "Structural change and regional convergence: the case of declining transport costs," MPRA Paper 34053, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. El-Hadj Bah & Lei Fang, 2015. "Working Paper - 219 - Impact of the business Environment on Output and Productivity in Africa," Working Paper Series 2159, African Development Bank.
    11. Adam, Christopher & Bevan, David & Gollin, Douglas, 2018. "Rural–Urban Linkages, Public Investment and Transport Costs: The Case of Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 497-510.
    12. Trevor Tombe, 2010. "The Missing Food Problem: How Low Agricultural Imports Contribute to International Income and Productivity Differences," Working Papers tecipa-416, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    13. Fabio Monteforte, 2015. "Structural Transformation, the Push-Pull Hypothesis and the Labour Market," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 15/654, Department of Economics, University of Bristol, UK, revised 01 Dec 2017.
    14. Lodovico Muratori, 2016. "Price Gap along the Ugandan Coffee Value Chain," Working Papers 1/16, Sapienza University of Rome, DISS.
    15. Minten, Bart & Tamru, Seneshaw & Legesse, Ermias Engida & Kuma, Tadesse, 2018. "Supply chain from production areas to Addis Ababa," IFPRI book chapters, in: The economics of teff: Exploring Ethiopia’s biggest cash crop, chapter 11, pages 263-298, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    16. Minten, Bart & Assefa, Thomas & Hirvonen, Kalle, 2017. "Can Agricultural Traders be Trusted? Evidence from Coffee in Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 77-88.
    17. Gollin, Douglas & Rogerson, Richard, 2014. "Productivity, transport costs and subsistence agriculture," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 38-48.
    18. Monteforte, Fabio, 2020. "Structural change, the push-pull hypothesis and the Spanish labour market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 148-169.
    19. Pina, Gilson M. G., 2013. "Mudança estrutural e a relação entre os setores em Cabo Verde
      [Structural change and the sectoral linkage in Cape Verde]      ," MPRA Paper 46015, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • O41 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets

    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:nbr:nberwo:15863. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.