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Productivity Growth And Convergence In Agriculture And Manufacturing, Will Martin, Devashish Mitra

Economics - All Scholarship

The growth of agricultural productivity is widely believed to be low. But this study finds the productivity growth rate in agriculture to be higher than that in manufacturing, both on average and for groups of countries at different stages of development. This suggests that a large agricultural sector need not be a disadvantage for growth performance - and may be an advantage.

Martin and Mitra examine the growth and convergence of total factor productivity in agriculture and manufacturing in a large sample of countries spanning many levels of development over the period 1967-92. There is a widely held but rarely …