Structural Transformation of the Agricultural Sector In Low- and Middle-Income Economies

Klaus Deininger (), Songqing Jin and Meilin Ma ()
Additional contact information
Klaus Deininger: The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA
Meilin Ma: Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Annual Review of Resource Economics, 2022, vol. 14, issue 1, 221-241

Abstract: Movement of labor from agriculture to nonagriculture and the associated increase in farm size through structural transformation are at the core of economic development. We conduct a comprehensive review of the literature exploring the causes and consequences of the transformation. We discuss (a) the size and determinants for the persisting wage gap between agriculture and nonagriculture, (b) policy-induced barriers to structural changes, (c) the role of trade costs and technical change in shaping the nature of structural transformation and comparative advantage of regions, and (d) how the overall development of an economy affects the relationship between farm size and farm productivity and hence changes competitiveness of different scales of farms. We also identify questions for policy and research and the ways in which new sources and interoperability of data can help answer these questions.

Keywords: developing economies; productivity; resource allocation; smallholder farming; structural transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O11 O12 O20 O47 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-111820-033252
Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anr:reseco:v:14:y:2022:p:221-241

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.annualreviews.org/action/ecommerce

DOI: 10.1146/annurev-resource-111820-033252

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Annual Review of Resource Economics from Annual Reviews Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by http://www.annualreviews.org ().