Technology Adoption in Agriculture and Convergence across Economies

Thorsten Wichmann

Berlecon Research Papers from Berlecon Research

Abstract: In this paper I present a simple model of technology adoption in agriculture in an exogenous as well as in an endogenous adoption framework. The model implies that an optimal technological gap between technological leaders and followers will persist. Full convergence or catch-up will never take place under normal circumstances if new technology has to be adapted to local conditions. Since this is often the case for agricultural technologies, the model implications are tested empirically by (i) adding a measure for the size of the agricultural sector to cross- country growth regressions and by (ii) discussing convergence in sets of countries with similar climate as a proxy for similar agricultural conditions. Both tests confirm the model predictions.

Keywords: growth and development theory; convergence; technology adoption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996-02
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ber:bertw1:0002

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