Agriculture and national welfare around the world: causality and international heterogeneity since 1960

Claudio Bravo-Ortega and Daniel Lederman

No 3499, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Calculations of marginal welfare effects suggest that agricultural development has had important positive effects on national welfare, especially in developing countries. Latin American and Caribbean countries have also benefited from agricultural growth, but non-agricultural production has had marginal welfare effects that are greater in magnitude than those provided by agricultural activities. In contrast, the industrialized, high-income countries experienced marginal welfare gains from non-agricultural activities that are much greater than those derived from agriculture, whose impact is actually negative. These calculations of marginal welfare effects across regions depend on econometric estimates of elasticities linking agricultural and nonagricultural economic activities to four elements in a national welfare function: national GDP per capita, average income of the poorest households within countries, environmental outcomes concerning air and water pollution and deforestation, and macroeconomic volatility. The econometric analyses are motivated by theoretical treatments of key issues. The empirical models are estimated with various econometric techniques that deal with issues of causality and international heterogeneity.

Keywords: Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems; Environmental Economics&Policies; Labor Policies; Economic Theory&Research; Health Economics&Finance; Economic Theory&Research; Environmental Economics&Policies; Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems; Achieving Shared Growth; Health Economics&Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-02-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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