Journal article
Joan Hamory, Marieke Kleemans, Nicholas Li, E. Miguel
Journal of the European Economic Association, 2017
Journal of the European Economic Association, 2017
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APA
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Hamory, J., Kleemans, M., Li, N., & Miguel, E. (2017). Reevaluating Agricultural Productivity Gaps with Longitudinal Microdata. Journal of the European Economic Association.
Chicago/Turabian
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Hamory, Joan, Marieke Kleemans, Nicholas Li, and E. Miguel. “Reevaluating Agricultural Productivity Gaps with Longitudinal Microdata.” Journal of the European Economic Association (2017).
MLA
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Hamory, Joan, et al. “Reevaluating Agricultural Productivity Gaps with Longitudinal Microdata.” Journal of the European Economic Association, 2017.
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@article{joan2017a,
title = {Reevaluating Agricultural Productivity Gaps with Longitudinal Microdata},
year = {2017},
journal = {Journal of the European Economic Association},
author = {Hamory, Joan and Kleemans, Marieke and Li, Nicholas and Miguel, E.}
}
Abstract
Recent research has pointed to large gaps in labor productivity between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in low-income countries, as well as between workers in rural and urban areas. Most estimates are based on national accounts or repeated cross-sections of microsurvey data, and as a result typically struggle to account for individual selection between sectors. This paper uses long-run individual-level panel data from two low-income countries (Indonesia and Kenya) to explore these gaps. Accounting for individual fixed effects leads to much smaller estimated productivity gains from moving into the non-agricultural sector (or urban areas), reducing estimated gaps by roughly 67%-92%. Furthermore, gaps do not emerge up to 5 years after a move between sectors. We evaluate whether these findings imply a re-assessment of the conventional wisdom regarding sectoral gaps, discuss how to reconcile them with existing cross-sectional estimates, and consider implications for the desirability of sectoral reallocation of labor.