IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pas/papers/2025-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What causes structural change?

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Warr
  • Arief Anshory Yusuf

Abstract

Structural change refers to long-term, systematic changes in the sectoral composition of aggregate economic output. Ordinarily, it means the contraction of agriculture relative to industry and services. We analyse its economic causes, using a small, comparative-static, empirically-based computable general equilibrium model of the economy of Thailand, a country experiencing rapid structural change over recent decades. We test the explanatory power of five potential contributors to structural change, suggested by simple economic theory and relevant literature, using Thai data: (a) differential growth rates of aggregate supplies of physical capital, labour, and land (the Rybczynski effect); (b) differential growth rates of total factor productivity between sectors; (c) changes in relative international prices; (d) changes in sectoral rates of trade protection; and (e) income growth with differences in expenditure elasticities of demand between final consumer goods (Engel’s law). It is concluded that, in Thailand’s case, explanation (b) dominates the other four.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Warr & Arief Anshory Yusuf, 2025. "What causes structural change?," Departmental Working Papers 2025-02, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:pas:papers:2025-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/2025-01/ACDE%20TnD%20Warr%20and%20Yusuf%20%202025%2002%20PW.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:wyi:journl:002112 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Kym Anderson, 1987. "On Why Agriculture Declines with Economic Growth," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 1(3), pages 195-207, October.
    3. Will J. Martin & Peter G. Warr, 1994. "Determinants of agriculture's relative decline: Thailand," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 11(2-3), pages 219-235, December.
    4. Devarajan, Shantayanan & Lewis, Jeffrey D & Robinson, Sherman, 1993. "External Shocks, Purchasing Power Parity, and the Equilibrium Real Exchange Rate," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 7(1), pages 45-63, January.
    5. L. Rachel Ngai & Christopher A. Pissarides, 2007. "Structural Change in a Multisector Model of Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 429-443, March.
    6. Justin Yifu Lin, 2013. "New structural economics: the third wave of development thinking," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 27(2), pages 1-13, November.
    7. Gordon Menzies & David Vines, 2008. "The Transfer Problem and Real Exchange Rate Overshooting in Financial Crises: The Role of the Debt Servicing Multiplier," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 709-727, September.
    8. Swinnen, Johan, 2021. "The political economy of agricultural and food policies," IFPRI book chapters, in: Agricultural development: New perspectives in a changing world, chapter 14, pages 471-502, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    9. 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.
    10. Peter Warr & Frances Wollmer, 1997. "Testing the small‐country assumption: Thailand's rice exports," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(2), pages 133-143.
    11. repec:oup:qjecon:v:129:y:2014:i:2:p:939-993. is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Martin, Will & Warr, Peter G, 1993. "Explaining the Relative Decline of Agriculture: A Supply-Side Analysis for Indonesia," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 7(3), pages 381-401, September.
    13. Nancy Mattison, 2013. "The challenges and economics of drug development in 2022," Monograph 000035, Office of Health Economics.
    14. Kym Anderson & Sundar Ponnusamy, 2023. "Structural transformation away from agriculture in growing open economies," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 54(1), pages 62-76, January.
    15. Erumban, Abdul A. & de Vries, Gaaitzen J., 2024. "Structural change and poverty reduction in developing economies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    16. Bei Jin & Gang Li, 2013. "Green economic growth from a developmental perspective," China Finance and Economic Review, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-7, December.
    17. W. M. Corden, 1966. "The Structure of a Tariff System and the Effective Protective Rate," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(3), pages 221-221.
    18. Douglas Gollin & David Lagakos & Michael E. Waugh, 2014. "The Agricultural Productivity Gap," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(2), pages 939-993.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Storesletten, Kjetil & Zhao, Bo & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 2020. "Business Cycle during Structural Change: Arthur Lewis’ Theory from a Neoclassical Perspective," CEPR Discussion Papers 14964, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. 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).
    3. Punyasavatsut, Chaiyuth & Coxhead, Ian A., 2002. "On The Decline Of Agriculture In Developing Countries: A Reinterpretation Of The Evidence," Staff Papers 12659, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    4. Gregory Casey & Soheil Shayegh & Juan Moreno-Cruz & Martin Bunzl & Oded Galor & Ken Caldeira, 2019. "The Impact of Climate Change on Fertility," Working Papers 2019-2, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    5. Cai, Wenbiao, 2015. "Structural change accounting with labor market distortions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 54-64.
    6. Hassan, Fadi, 2016. "The price of development: The Penn–Balassa–Samuelson effect revisited," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 291-309.
    7. Kjetil Storesletten & Bo Zhao & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2019. "Business Cycle during Structural Change: Arthur Lewis' Theory from a Neoclassical Perspective," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2191, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    8. Gregory Casey & Soheil Shayegh & Juan Moreno-Cruz & Martin Bunzl & Oded Galor & Ken Caldeira, 2019. "The Impact of Climate Change on Fertility," Department of Economics Working Papers 2019-04, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    9. SJ, Balaji & Pal, Suresh, 2021. "Agricultural Productivity, Pay-Gap, and Non-Farm Development: Contribution to Structural Transformation in India," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315213, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    10. Esposti, Roberto, 2014. "On why and how agriculture declines," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 73-88.
    11. Monteforte, Fabio, 2020. "Structural change, the push-pull hypothesis and the Spanish labour market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 148-169.
    12. Cao, Huoqing & Chen, Chaoran & Xi, Xican, 2024. "Home Production and Gender Gap in Structural Change," MPRA Paper 122334, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Roberto ESPOSTI, 2007. "On the Decline of Agriculture. Evidence from Italian Regions in the Post-WWII Period," Working Papers 300, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    14. Yi Li, 2020. "Internet Development and Structural Transformation: Evidence from China," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 10(1), pages 1-8.
    15. 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.
    16. Paula Bustos & Juan Manuel Castro Vincenzi & Joan Monras & Jacopo Ponticelli, 2019. "Structural Transformation, Industrial Specialization, and Endogenous Growth," Working Papers wp2019_1906, CEMFI.
    17. Francisco J. Buera & Joseph P. Kaboski & Martí Mestieri & Daniel G. O'Connor, 2020. "The Stable Transformation Path," NBER Working Papers 27731, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Ibrahim, Muazu, 2020. "Effects of trade and financial integration on structural transformation in Africa: New evidence from a sample splitting approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 556(C).
    19. Alvarez-Cuadrado, Francisco & Long, Ngo & Poschke, Markus, 2017. "Capital-labor substitution, structural change and growth," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), September.
    20. Gangopadhyay, Kausik & Mondal, Debasis, 2021. "Productivity, relative sectoral prices, and total factor productivity: Theory and evidence," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • C60 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - General
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

    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:pas:papers:2025-02. 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: Prema-chandra Athukorala (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/asanuau.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.