Productivity, Structural Change, and Latin American Development

Carlos Machicado Salas, Felix Rioja and Antonio Saravia ()
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Antonio Saravia: Deloitte Tax LLP

No 03/2012, Development Research Working Paper Series from Institute for Advanced Development Studies

Abstract: We calibrate a simple neoclassical model of structural transformation to a set of Latin American countries and show that slow growth in agricultural productivity can substantially delay the development process and result in signi cant di erences in per capita incomes. Some of our results indicate that low agricultural productivity delayed the beginning of the industrialization process in Paraguay and Bolivia by about 100 years compared to the leader of the group, Chile. The development pro- cess can be accelerated, however, by increasing productivity in the non-agricultural sector. In fact, in the long run, it is non-agricultural productivity what determines the speed of convergence. Improvements in non-agricultural productivity between 20% to over 100% would be required for the other Latin American countries in our set to signi cantly close the income gap with Chile by the end of the century.

Keywords: Economic Development; Latin America; Agriculture Productivity; Manufacturing Productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E13 O47 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2012-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-eff and nep-lam
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Journal Article: Productivity, Structural Change and Latin American Development (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:adv:wpaper:201203

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