Agriculture, Development and Urban Bias

Dirk J Bezemer and Derek Headey

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Throughout history, agriculture-led development strategies with state support programs have been essential to achieving rapid economy-wide growth, poverty reduction and structural transformation at early stages of development. Yet over the last three decades, the domestic and international policy environments have continued to discriminate against agricultural development in the poorest countries. This paper studies the causes and manifestations of this ‘urban bias’, including discrimination in domestic pricing policies and in the international trade regime, decreasing financial support from LDC governments and aid donors, and increasing neglect of agriculture in development theory and economic research. The authors conclude that urban bias remains a persistent and paramount obstacle to sustained growth and poverty reduction in the least developed countries.

Keywords: agricultural development; urban bias; agricultural policies; foreign aid (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-08
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 (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/7026/1/MPRA_paper_7026.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Agriculture, Development, and Urban Bias (2008)
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:pra:mprapa:7026

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().