IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/win/winwop/2015-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Technology, Policy Distortions and the Rise of Large Farms

Author

Listed:
  • Wenbiao Cai

Abstract

Between 1900 and 2002, mean farm size in the U.S. quadrupled. The increasing dominance of large farms has raised concerns about inequality and questions about the role of policies in fueling this trend. I construct a two-sector model with an endogenous size distribution of farms, and use the model to show that factor endowment and technological change cannot fully account for long-term changes in farm size. Utilizing a novel set of farm-level statistics constructed from historical census of agriculture, I further show that policy distortions to farm size are regressive and are crucial for the rise of large farms.

Suggested Citation

  • Wenbiao Cai, 2015. "Technology, Policy Distortions and the Rise of Large Farms," Departmental Working Papers 2015-03, The University of Winnipeg, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:win:winwop:2015-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://economics.uwinnipeg.ca/RePEc/winwop/2015-03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    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. Rodolfo E. Manuelli & Ananth Seshadri, 2014. "Human Capital and the Wealth of Nations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2736-2762, September.
    3. Pedro Bento & Diego Restuccia, 2017. "Misallocation, Establishment Size, and Productivity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 267-303, July.
    4. Luis Garicano & Claire Lelarge & John Van Reenen, 2016. "Firm Size Distortions and the Productivity Distribution: Evidence from France," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(11), pages 3439-3479, November.
    5. S.K. Bhutani, 2009. "China and India," India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, , vol. 65(4), pages 383-391, October.
    6. 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.
    7. Nezih Guner & Gustavo Ventura & Xu Yi, 2008. "Macroeconomic Implications of Size-Dependent Policies," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 721-744, October.
    8. Restuccia, Diego & Yang, Dennis Tao & Zhu, Xiaodong, 2008. "Agriculture and aggregate productivity: A quantitative cross-country analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 234-250, March.
    9. Kislev, Yoav & Peterson, Willis, 1982. "Prices, Technology, and Farm Size," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(3), pages 578-595, June.
    10. Cai, Wenbiao & Pandey, Manish, 2013. "Size-dependent labor regulations and structural transformation in India," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 272-275.
    11. Tasso Adamopoulos & Diego Restuccia, 2020. "Land Reform and Productivity: A Quantitative Analysis with Micro Data," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 1-39, July.
    12. MacDonald, James M., 2011. "Why Are Farms Getting Larger? The Case Of The U.S," 51st Annual Conference, Halle, Germany, September 28-30, 2011 115361, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA).
    13. John W. Kendrick, 1961. "Productivity Trends in the United States," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kend61-1, March.
    14. Chad Turner & Robert Tamura & Sean Mulholland, 2013. "How important are human capital, physical capital and total factor productivity for determining state economic growth in the United States, 1840–2000?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 319-371, December.
    15. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Peter J. Klenow, 2009. "Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1403-1448.
    16. Daniel A. Sumner, 2014. "American Farms Keep Growing: Size, Productivity, and Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(1), pages 147-166, Winter.
    17. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2008. "Policy Distortions and Aggregate Productivity with Heterogeneous Plants," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 707-720, October.
    18. Virgiliu Midrigan & Daniel Yi Xu, 2014. "Finance and Misallocation: Evidence from Plant-Level Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(2), pages 422-458, February.
    19. Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones, 1999. "Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 114(1), pages 83-116.
    20. Key, Nigel D. & Roberts, Michael J., 2007. "Commodity Payments, Farm Business Survival, and Farm Size Growth," Economic Research Report 55968, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    21. Akos Valentinyi & Berthold Herrendorf, 2008. "Measuring Factor Income Shares at the Sector Level," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 820-835, October.
    22. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2013. "Misallocation and productivity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 1-10, January.
    23. Robert E. Lucas Jr., 1978. "On the Size Distribution of Business Firms," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 508-523, Autumn.
    24. García-Santana, Manuel & Pijoan-Mas, Josep, 2014. "The reservation laws in India and the misallocation of production factors," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 193-209.
    25. Zvi Griliches, 1963. "The Sources of Measured Productivity Growth: United States Agriculture, 1940-60," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 71, pages 331-331.
    26. Gardner, Bruce L, 1992. "Changing Economic Perspectives on the Farm Problem," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 62-101, March.
    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. Yatsiv Ihor & Cherevko Heorhiy, 2022. "Economic and Social Consequences of the Concentration of Production in Agricultural Enterprises in Ukraine," Folia Oeconomica Stetinensia, Sciendo, vol. 22(2), pages 224-245, December.

    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. Diego Restuccia, 2019. "Misallocation and aggregate productivity across time and space," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(1), pages 5-32, February.
    2. Nezih Guner & Andrii Parkhomenko & Gustavo Ventura, 2018. "Managers and Productivity Differences," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 29, pages 256-282, July.
    3. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2017. "The Causes and Costs of Misallocation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 151-174, Summer.
    4. Tasso Adamopoulos & Diego Restuccia, 2020. "Land Reform and Productivity: A Quantitative Analysis with Micro Data," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 1-39, July.
    5. Manuel García-Santana & Roberto Ramos, 2015. "Distortions and the size distribution of plants: evidence from cross-country data," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 279-312, August.
    6. Chaoran Chen & Diego Restuccia & Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis, 2023. "Land Misallocation and Productivity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 441-465, April.
    7. Douglas Gollin & Christopher Udry, 2021. "Heterogeneity, Measurement Error, and Misallocation: Evidence from African Agriculture," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(1), pages 1-80.
    8. Chen, Chaoran, 2020. "Technology adoption, capital deepening, and international productivity differences," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    9. Jan Grobovšek, 2020. "Managerial Delegation, Law Enforcement, and Aggregate Productivity," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(5), pages 2256-2289.
    10. Franz Hamann & Fernando Arias-Rodríguez & Jesus Bejarano & Margarita Gafaro & Juan C. Mendez-Vizcaino & Andrea Paola Poveda-Olarte, 2019. "Productividad total de los factores y eficiencia en el uso de los recursos productivos en Colombia," Revista ESPE - Ensayos Sobre Política Económica, Banco de la República, issue 89, pages 1-54, February.
    11. Bento, Pedro & Restuccia, Diego, 2021. "On average establishment size across sectors and countries," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 220-242.
    12. 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.
    13. David Lagakos & Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak & Michael E. Waugh, 2023. "The Welfare Effects of Encouraging Rural–Urban Migration," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(3), pages 803-837, May.
    14. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2013. "Misallocation and productivity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 1-10, January.
    15. Dhritman Bhattacharya & Nezih Guner & Gustavo Ventura, 2013. "Distortions, Endogenous Managerial Skills and Productivity Differences," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 11-25, January.
    16. Xi, Xican, 2023. "Multi-establishment firms, misallocation, and productivity," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    17. Chaoran Chen, 2017. "Untitled Land, Occupational Choice, and Agricultural Productivity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 91-121, October.
    18. Jose Joaquin Lopez & Jesica Torres, 2020. "Size-dependent policies, talent misallocation, and the return to skill," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 38, pages 59-93, October.
    19. Da-Rocha, José-María & Restuccia, Diego & Tavares, Marina Mendes, 2019. "Firing costs, misallocation, and aggregate productivity," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 60-81.
    20. Tasso Adamopoulos & Loren Brandt & Chaoran Chen & Diego Restuccia & Xiaoyun Wei, 2022. "Land Security and Mobility Frictions," Working Papers tecipa-717, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    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:win:winwop:2015-03. 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: Soham Baksi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dwinnca.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.