This document discusses how agricultural transformation relates to economic growth in developing countries. It explores whether agricultural changes drive growth or vice versa. Evidence suggests agricultural productivity growth, such as from the Green Revolution, accounted for most economic growth in developing countries from 1960-2000 by increasing farm output and freeing up labor. However, puzzles remain about the extent and mechanisms of this relationship that require further examination of interactions between agriculture, trade, technology, and population changes over time.

2.  Will documents x-country income
convergence and how the agricultural sector
is being transformed by it
 To what extent is agriculture transformation
◦ an effect of
◦ or a cause of
economic growth?
 Why might this matter?

3.  Neoclassical growth model (Solow)
◦ Economies with low capital stock have to grow faster than
those already in steady state (diminishing MPK).
◦ Nothing to do with agriculture per se
 Structural transformation
◦ Gradual shift of labor out of low productivity agriculture
 overall growth (e.g., Gollin, Parente, Rogerson 2002)
◦ Increasing ag productivity a precondition for growth

4.  Evidence from the Green Revolution (Gollin et al.
2018): GDP/capita = f(HYV adoption,…)
◦  80% of economic growth in DCs from 1960-2000
accounted for by HYV adoption!
◦  60% of this effect comes via ag productivity growth, 40%
via reallocation of labor out of agriculture.
◦  Developing world would have had a billion more people
without a Green Revolution.
 Yet puzzles remain:
◦ Estimated effects of HYV persist in a sample dominated by
low adoption countries of SSA.
◦ 2SLS vs. OLS  higher national income associated with
lower HYV adoption rate.
◦ Not much room left for other causal factors (e.g. trade
liberalization, nonag technology as in Baldwin 2016)

5.  If both income and population growth in DCs
are largely driven by ag technical change
◦ Might need to rethink food demand/supply
projections that treat these sides of the market as
independent
◦ Need to think about how, in the era of globalization
(i.e., post-2000), trade interacts with technology
adoption in agriculture