IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2019-71.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mobile phone use, productivity and labour market in Tanzania

Author

Listed:
  • Aimable Nsabimana
  • Patricia Funjika

Abstract

Access to mobile phone has increased substantially over the last decade in sub-Saharan Africa. The evidence suggests that increased use of mobile phones in the region has upgraded the market prices received by producers for their cash crops, but so far there is limited knowledge on labour market transitions effects of mobile phone access. In this study, we use farm household and individual labour force information, from LSMS-ISA Tanzania National Panel Survey, to examine the impact of mobile phone ownership on labour markets and farm productivity in the country.

Suggested Citation

  • 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).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2019-71
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp-2019-71.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aker, Jenny C. & Ksoll, Christopher, 2016. "Can mobile phones improve agricultural outcomes? Evidence from a randomized experiment in Niger," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 44-51.
    2. Margaret McMillan & Kenneth Harttgen, 2014. "Working Paper - 209 - What is driving the African Growth Miracle," Working Paper Series 2145, African Development Bank.
    3. Klonner, Stefan & Nolen, Patrick J., 2010. "Cell Phones and Rural Labor Markets: Evidence from South Africa," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Hannover 2010 56, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Jenny C. Aker & Isaac M. Mbiti, 2010. "Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 207-232, Summer.
    7. 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.
    8. Paula Bustos & Bruno Caprettini & Jacopo Ponticelli, 2016. "Agricultural Productivity and Structural Transformation: Evidence from Brazil," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(6), pages 1320-1365, June.
    9. Jenny C. Aker, 2010. "Information from Markets Near and Far: Mobile Phones and Agricultural Markets in Niger," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 46-59, July.
    10. Kirchberger, Martina, 2017. "Natural disasters and labor markets," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 40-58.
    11. Surabhi Mittal & Sanjay Gandhi & Gaurav Tripathi, "undated". "Socio-Economic Impact of Mobile Phones on Indian Agriculture," Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi Working Papers 246, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, New Delhi, India.
    12. Douglas Gollin & Stephen Parente & Richard Rogerson, 2002. "The Role of Agriculture in Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 160-164, May.
    13. 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.
    14. Samantha Punch, 2001. "Household Division of Labour: Generation, Gender, Age, Birth Order and Sibling Composition," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 15(4), pages 803-823, December.
    15. Dillon, Brian & Barrett, Christopher B., 2017. "Agricultural factor markets in Sub-Saharan Africa: An updated view with formal tests for market failure," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 64-77.
    16. Megumi Muto, 2012. "The Impacts of Mobile Phones and Personal Networks on Rural-to-Urban Migration: Evidence from Uganda," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 21(5), pages -807, November.
    17. Loren Tauer, 1995. "Age and Farmer Productivity," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 17(1), pages 63-69.
    18. Lado, Cleophas, 1992. "Female labour participation in agricultural production and the implications for nutrition and health in rural Africa," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 34(7), pages 789-807, April.
    19. 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.
    20. Christine Zhenwei Qiang & Siou Chew Kuek & Andrew Dymond & Steve Esselaar, 2012. "Mobile Applications for Agriculture and Rural Development," World Bank Publications - Reports 21892, The World Bank Group.
    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. Gangopadhyay, Kausik & Mondal, Debasis, 2021. "Productivity, relative sectoral prices, and total factor productivity: Theory and evidence," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    2. Chen, Chaoran, 2020. "Technology adoption, capital deepening, and international productivity differences," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    3. Hassan, Fadi, 2016. "The price of development: The Penn–Balassa–Samuelson effect revisited," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 291-309.
    4. 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.
    5. McArthur, John W. & McCord, Gordon C., 2017. "Fertilizing growth: Agricultural inputs and their effects in economic development," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 133-152.
    6. 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.
    7. Monteforte, Fabio, 2020. "Structural change, the push-pull hypothesis and the Spanish labour market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 148-169.
    8. Yi Li, 2020. "Internet Development and Structural Transformation: Evidence from China," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 10(1), pages 1-8.
    9. 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.
    10. Paula Bustos & Juan Manuel Castro Vincenzi & Joan Monras & Jacopo Ponticelli, 2019. "Structural Transformation, Industrial Specialization, and Endogenous Growth," Working Papers wp2019_1906, CEMFI.
    11. Ponticelli, Jacopo & Bustos, Paula & Castro-Vincenzi, Juan & Monras, Joan, 2018. "Industrialization without Innovation," CEPR Discussion Papers 13379, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Cai, Wenbiao, 2015. "Structural change accounting with labor market distortions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 54-64.
    13. Federico Huneeus & Richard Rogerson, 2020. "Heterogeneous Paths of Industrialization," Working Papers 2020-23, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    14. Fabio Monteforte, 2015. "Structural Transformation, the Push-Pull Hypothesis and the Labour Market," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 15/654, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK, revised 01 Dec 2017.
    15. Barker, Tom & Üngör, Murat, 2019. "Vietnam: The next asian Tiger?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 96-118.
    16. Murat Ungor, 2017. "Productivity Growth and Labor Reallocation: Latin America versus East Asia," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 24, pages 25-42, March.
    17. Min, Shi & Liu, Min & Huang, Jikun, 2020. "Does the application of ICTs facilitate rural economic transformation in China? Empirical evidence from the use of smartphones among farmers," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    18. Anne Villamil & Xiaobing Wang & Yuxiang Zou, 2020. "Growth and development with dual labor markets," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 88(6), pages 801-826, December.
    19. Murat Üngör, 2016. "Did the rising importance of services decelerate overall productivity improvement of Turkey during 2002–2007?," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 238-261, July.
    20. Joël Cariolle & David A Carroll, 2022. "The Use of Digital for Public Service Provision in Sub-Saharan Africa," Working Papers hal-03004535, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mobile phones; Agricultural productivity; Market prices; Tanzania;
    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:unu:wpaper:wp-2019-71. 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.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.