Technology Choice and Income Distribution

Jeffrey James and Haider Khan ()
Additional contact information
Jeffrey James: Tilburg University

Chapter 6 in Technological Systems and Development, 1998, pp 105-130 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Within the context of the agricultural sector one can point to numerous attempts to assess the macro-economic effects of alternative technologies on the distribution of income. One of the most influential early efforts, for example, was undertaken mainly in the Indian context by John Mellor,1 who was seeking to redefine agriculture’s role in development strategy and policy. In rejecting the then existing capital-intensive and industry-led development model and advocating instead a rural-led, employment-intensive path to development, Mellor was concerned, among other things, with the relationships between increased foodgrain production using alternative technologies and the growth rate of non-agricultural employment, non-agricultural sector capital-labour ratios and the course of per capita incomes of the labour force. More recently, Haggblade and Hazell2 have used an input-output based model to examine how differences in the choice of agricultural technology and farm size influence the indirect (or multiplier) effects of increases in agricultural output. They show, for example, that: ‘The input intensity, consumption profile of targeted farms and processing characteristics of the farm output all affect the size and composition of nonfarm spinoffs.’3 The finding that consumption linkages generally dominate the total multiplier confirms Mellor’s emphasis on the importance of this particular type of linkage effect.

Keywords: Income Distribution; Structural Path; Technology Choice; Household Group; Refined Sugar (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Technology choice and income distribution (1997)
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:pal:palchp:978-1-349-26413-1_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349264131

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-26413-1_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().