IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/egc/wpaper/932.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Return to Capital in Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Udry

    (Economic Growth Center, Yale University)

  • Santosh Anagol

    (Yale University)

Abstract

We show that the real return to capital in Ghana's informal sector is high. For farmers, we find annual returns ranging from 205-350% in the new technology of pineapple cultivation, and 30-50% in well-established food crop cultivation. We also examine the relative prices of durable goods of varying durability, and estimate a lower bound to the opportunity cost of capital of 60%.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Udry & Santosh Anagol, 2006. "The Return to Capital in Ghana," Working Papers 932, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    • Handle: RePEc:egc:wpaper:932
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.yale.edu/growth_pdf/cdp932.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heckman, James & Singer, Burton, 1984. "A Method for Minimizing the Impact of Distributional Assumptions in Econometric Models for Duration Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(2), pages 271-320, March.
    2. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1990. "Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 92-96, May.
    3. Timothy G. Conley & Christopher R. Udry, 2010. "Learning about a New Technology: Pineapple in Ghana," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 35-69, March.
    4. Jerry A. Hausman, 1979. "Individual Discount Rates and the Purchase and Utilization of Energy-Using Durables," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 33-54, Spring.
    5. Banerjee, Abhijit V. & Duflo, Esther, 2005. "Growth Theory through the Lens of Development Economics," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 7, pages 473-552, Elsevier.
    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. Azariadis, Costas & Stachurski, John, 2005. "Poverty Traps," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, Elsevier.
    2. Todd D. Gerarden & Richard G. Newell & Robert N. Stavins, 2017. "Assessing the Energy-Efficiency Gap," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1486-1525, December.
    3. Philippe Aghion & Diego Comin & Peter Howitt & Isabel Tecu, 2016. "When Does Domestic Savings Matter for Economic Growth?," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 64(3), pages 381-407, August.
    4. Harold L. Cole & Jeremy Greenwood & Juan M. Sanchez, 2016. "Why Doesn't Technology Flow From Rich to Poor Countries?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84(4), pages 1477-1521, July.
    5. Robert S. Chirinko & Debdulal Mallick, 2019. "International Capital Allocations and the Lucas Paradox Redux," CESifo Working Paper Series 7796, CESifo.
    6. Matthew Lowe & Chris Papageorgiou & Fidel Perez-Sebastian, 2012. "The Public and Private MPK," DEGIT Conference Papers c017_021, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    7. Ayyagari, Meghana & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2012. "Financing of firms in developing countries : lessons from research," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6036, The World Bank.
    8. Jaume Ventura & Fernando Broner, 2008. "Rethinking the effects of financial liberalization," 2008 Meeting Papers 747, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Benjamin F. Jones, 2014. "The Human Capital Stock: A Generalized Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(11), pages 3752-3777, November.
    10. Jean-Louis Warnholz, 2008. "Is investment in Africa low despite high profits?," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2008-31, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    11. Dominik Naeher, 2022. "Technology Adoption Under Costly Information Processing," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(2), pages 699-753, May.
    12. Michael E. Waugh, 2010. "International Trade and Income Differences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2093-2124, December.
    13. Paul Beaudry & Patrick Francois, 2007. "The Economics of Inefficient Technology Use," NBER Working Papers 13500, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Francesco Caselli & James Feyrer, 2007. "The Marginal Product of Capital," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(2), pages 535-568.
    15. Felix Gerding & Espen Henriksen & Ina Simonovska, 2014. "The Risky Capital of Emerging Markets," NBER Working Papers 20769, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Patrick Bajari & Chenghuan Sean Chu & Denis Nekipelov & Minjung Park, 2013. "A Dynamic Model of Subprime Mortgage Default: Estimation and Policy Implications," NBER Working Papers 18850, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Kiminori Matsuyama, 2008. "Aggregate Implications of Credit Market Imperfections," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2007, Volume 22, pages 1-60, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Peter Arcidiacono, Holger Sieg, Frank Sloan, 2001. "Living Rationally Under the Volcano? Heavy Drinking and Smoking Among the Elderly," Computing in Economics and Finance 2001 207, Society for Computational Economics.
    19. Anusha Chari & Jennifer S. Rhee, 2020. "The Return to Capital in Capital-Scarce Countries," NBER Working Papers 27675, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Fernando Broner & Jaume Ventura, 2016. "Rethinking the Effects of Financial Globalization," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(3), pages 1497-1542.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Capital; durable goods; credit markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity

    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:egc:wpaper:932. 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: Benjamin King (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/egyalus.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.