Research report using mathematical models to access linkages between agricultural development and non-agricultural economic growth in Japan - analyses the role of rural migration, savings and capital flows in growth rates, etc. Bibliography pp. 133 to 137, graphs, references and statistical tables.

The process of economic development is characterized by substantial reallocations of resources across sectors. In this paper, we construct a multi-sector model in which there are barriers to the movement of labor from low-productivity traditional agriculture to modern sectors. With the barrier in place, we show that improvements in productivity in modern sectors (including agriculture) or reductions in transportation costs may lead to a rise in agricultural employment and through terms-oftrade effects may harm subsistence farmers if the traditional subsistence sector is larger than a critical level. This suggests that policy advice based on the earlier literature needs to be revised. Reducing barriers to mobility (through reductions in the cost of skill acquisition and institutional changes) and improving the productivity of subsistence farmers needs to precede policies designed to increase the productivity of modern sectors or decrease transportation costs.

This study provides a comprehensive overview of Korea’s macroeconomic growth and structural change since World War II, and traces some of the roots of development to the colonial period. The authors explore in detail colonial development, changing national income patterns, relative price shifts, sources of aggregate growth, and sources of sectoral structural change, comparing them with other countries.

The research published here constitutes a profound reflection on what is taking place in the world of agriculture at the threshold of the year 2000. The book attempts to go beyond a narrow sectoral analysis of the primary sector. It sets out to focus instead on the dynamic and innovative aspects of the agrotechnological system constituted by the complex interdependence of the agro-production, agro-food, agro-industrial and agro-ecological subsystems. The authors, internationally renowned scholars and scientists, tackle the most pressing contemporary economics issues from both a theoretical and policy-making standpoint. Three different lines of research are pursued concerning, first, the evolution and trends of world and European agricultural production, second, agricultural surplus formation and productivity dynamics in the economies of industrialized countries, and, lastly, the destination of agricultural outputs and land allotment under the impact of agro-bio-technologies.

This title was first published in 2003. Nurul Islam, currently head of economic and social policy at the FAO/UN and a key advisor at the International Food Policy Research Institute, has been a renowned expert on economic development for the past thirty years. Over that time he has researched and written about a wide range of economic development issues, focussing mainly on policy. For the first time ever, his most important writings have been brought together in this volume, reflecting not only Professor Islam’s own views on particular issues, but also providing a unique overview of the key debates and discussions taking place among academic economist and policy analysts over the past three decades. The collection is divided into three main sections: trade and aid, development strategy, and food security, the section on food security being the most recent. It discusses food security in a broad sense, covering issues of availability and growth in food production, access or entitlement of individuals or households to basic food, and variability in food supplies and prices. In the section on Development Strategy, Professor Islam highlights how theoretical argument has veered away from organized ’development planning’ models which proved so important in the 1960s. He questions the role of models and policies throughout the decades and, following articles written in the 1970s or 80s, he includes articles he has recently completed, assessing the previous ones from his current perspective. In the final section, on Trade and Aid, he follows the academic debate on trade and exchange rate policies in developing countries from the 1960s to the progress of the WTO forums of today. This is a wide-ranging and thought-provoking volume. No matter whether the subject in question was examined in the 1960s or currently, Professor Islam provides a challenging and insightful analysis, and even the earliest articles retain relevance and will be of continuing interest.

D. Gale Johnson, one of the world's foremost agricultural economists, has over the last five decades changed the conduct of research on agricultural economics and policy. The papers brought together in The Economics of Agriculture reveal the breadth and depth of his influence on the creation of modern agricultural economics. Volume 1 collects for the first time in one source Johnson's most important work. These classic papers explore the consequences of government intervention in United States and world agriculture; the economics of agricultural supply and of rural labor and human capital issues; and the analysis of agricultural productivity in poor countries, including the centrally planned economies of China and Eastern Europe. Models of precise reasoning and powerful empirical research, the papers cover a wide range of topics—from U.S. commodity price policy to the economics of population control and farm policy reform in China. Volume 1 includes a definitive bibliography of Johnson's published writings. Volume 2 presents twenty-two papers by Johnson's former students and colleagues. International in scope, these papers explore themes and topics inspired by Johnson's work, including agricultural policy and U.S. farm prices; European Common Agricultural Policy; and agricultural and rural development in the Third World. Contributors to Volume 2 are David G. Abler, John M. Antle, Richard R. Barichello, Andrew P. Barkley, Karen Brooks, David S. Bullock, Robert E. Evenson, B. Delworth Gardner, Bruce L. Gardner, Dale M. Hoover, Wallace E. Huffman, Paul R. Johnson, Yoav Kislev, Justin Yifu Lin, Yair Mundlak, John Nash, Keijuro Otsuka, Willis Peterson, Todd E. Petzel, Vernon W. Ruttan, Maurice Schiff, G. Edward Schuh, Theodore W. Schultz, James Snyder, Vasant Sukhatme, Daniel A. Sumner, Vinod Thomas, George Tolley, and Alberto Valdes.