Wages, Human Capital, and Barriers to Structural Transformation

A-Tier
Journal: American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
Year: 2018
Volume: 10
Issue: 2
Pages: 1-23

Score contribution per author:

2.011 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We document for 13 countries ranging from rich (Canada, United States) to poor (India, Indonesia) that average wages are considerably lower in agriculture than in the other sectors. Moreover, agriculture has less educated workers and lower Mincer returns. We view these findings through the lens of a multi-sector model in which workers differ in observed and unobserved characteristics and sectors differ in their human-capital intensities. We derive expressions for the implied barriers to the reallocation of labor out of agriculture. We find that in our sample these barriers are considerably smaller than what the macro-development literature has argued.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:aea:aejmac:v:10:y:2018:i:2:p:1-23
Journal Field
Macro
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-29