Factor endowments, wage growth, and changing food self-sufficiency: Evidence from country-level panel data

Keijiro Otsuka (), Yanyan Liu () and Futoshi Yamauchi

No 1246, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: Asian countries have witnessed a sharp increase in real wage as a result of rapid economic growth and structural transformation in recent years. Using a country level panel data from 1980 to 2010, this paper examines the effects of real wage increase on Asian agriculture that traditionally used family labor intensively on small farms. The empirical evidence supports our hypothesis that an increase in real wages, along with absorptions of labor into nonagricultural sectors, has been inducing the substitution of labor by machines in agriculture. However, this process is less successful in the countries that are constrained by their small operational land sizes, resulting in lowered land productivity. We also demonstrated that dynamic changes in yield are an important determinant of food self-sufficiency ratio.

Keywords: diet; economic development; farm size; machine use; agricultural productivity; time use patterns; Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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 (32)

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https://hdl.handle.net/10568/153400

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Journal Article: Factor Endowments, Wage Growth, and Changing Food Self-Sufficiency: Evidence from Country-Level Panel Data (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1246

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