According to national accounts data, value added per worker is much higher in the non-agricultural sector than in agriculture in the typical country, and particularly so in developing countries. Taken at face value, this "agricultural productivity gap" suggests that labor is greatly misallocated across sectors. In this paper, we draw on new micro evidence to ask to what extent the gap is still present when better measures of sector labor inputs and value added are taken into consideration. We find that even after considering sector differences in hours worked and human capital per worker, as well as alternative measures of sector output constructed from household survey data, a puzzlingly large gap remains.

According to national accounts data, value added per worker is much higher in the nonagricultural sector than in agriculture in the typical country, particularly in developing countries. Taken at face value, this "agricultural productivity gap'' suggests that labor is greatly misallocated across sectors. In this article, we draw on new micro evidence to ask to what extent the gap is still present when better measures of sector labor inputs and value added are taken into consideration. We find that even after considering sector differences in hours worked and human capital per worker, as well as alternative measures of sector output constructed from household survey data, a puzzlingly large gap remains.

Africa is backward in economic growth, food security, child nutrition, and health, and is combating environmental degradation, is beset by conflicts, and has the highest population growth rate in the world. One of the core contributing factors is the weak performance of the agricultural sector. Liberalisation of agricultural markets became a core issue in development policy, but this does not address the problem. This study discusses the question of whether developing countries have lost their comparative advantage in agricultural products due to a change in productivity growth rates. Firstly, agricultural productivity in developed countries increases immensely in comparison with developing countries; this leads to a growing international productivity gap. Secondly, productivity growth rates in the agricultural sector exceed those in the industrial sector. The first observation results in a loss of competitiveness and the first and second together cause a diminishing comparative advantage in agriculture in developing countries. The book offers interesting perspectives about the growing global divergence with strong theoretical foundations and empirical evidence. It is aimed at policy makers, professionals, academics, and students of economics and political sciences, and anyone with an interest in development study.

The growth of agricultural productivity is widely believed to be low. But this study finds the productivity rate in agriculture to be higher than that in manufacturing, both on average and for groups of countries at different stages of development. This suggests that a large agricultural sector need not be a disadvantage for growth performance, and may be an advantage.

A large share of cross-country differences in productivity is explained by differences in agricultural productivity. Using a combination of sub-national agricultural statistics and geospatial datasets on crop-specific potential yields, we study the main drivers of this variation from a macroeconomic perspective. We find that differences in geographically-induced crop-specific comparative advantages can explain a substantial share of the variation in yields across the world. Data reveal substantial gaps between potential and observed yields in most countries. When decomposing these within country gaps, we find that crop selection gaps are on average larger than those induced by input usage alone. The results highlight the importance of understanding the interaction of geography and crop selection drivers in assessing aggregate agricultural productivity differences.