Yujiro Hayami

Sources of Agricultural Productivity Gap Among Selected Countries

This study explores the causes of enormous agricultural productivity differences now existing among the developed and less developed countries. Factors are identified that determine the productivity gap, and their influences are gauged on the 1957–62 national aggregate data of 38 nations. Aggregate production functions are estimated on the cross-country data; and, with the estimates of production elasticities, the productivity differences between India and United States and between India and Japan are accounted for by conventional inputs (labor, land, fertilizer and machinery) and nonconventional inputs (education and research). The measured contributions of respective factors to the productivity differences provide a guideline for allocating development efforts in the less developed countries.

The intercountry agricultural production function and productivity differences among countries

Abstract The sources of differences in labor productivity in agriculture between developed countries (DCs) and less developed countries (LDCs) are identified by estimating an aggregate agricultural production function based on cross-county data for 1960, 1970 and 1980. The production function was found to be stable over the entire period. Agriculture in the DCs was characterized by increasing returns and in the LDCs by constant returns to scale. The results imply that unfavorable man/land ratios do not represent an immediate barrier to rapid agricultural development in the low-income LDCs. But they may create a serious agricultural adjustment problem as those countries advance into the middle-income range.

Korean Rice, Taiwan Rice, and Japanese Agricultural Stagnation: An Economic Consequence of Colonialism

I. Empirical observation and hypothesis, 564. — Quantitative analysis, 574. — III. Findings and implications, 579.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

On the Use of the Cobb-Douglas Production Function on the Cross-Country Analysis of Agricultural Production

IN A previous paper [4], I reported the results of the estimation of the agricultural production function on cross-country data, including conventional inputs (labor, land, fertilizer, and machinery) and nonconventional inputs (education, research, and extension). In that study the production function was specified as being of the Cobb-Douglas type, thus assuming the unitary elasticity of substitution among inputs. This note attempts to test this assumption in the previously reported study by estimating on the cross-country data the parameters of the CES production function developed by Arrow et al. [1]. Since the CobbDouglas production function is the commonly used form of production function in agricultural economics research, the formal test of its underlying assumption should be of general interest.

Resource Endowments and Technological Change in Agriculture: U.S. and Japanese Experiences in International Perspective

THE United States and Japan, despite enormous differences in resource endowments, have attained high rates of growth in agricultural output and productivity. The patterns of growth in productivity and resource use are as contrasting as their resource endowments. This study searches for the common thread in the U.S. and Japanese agricultural growth by appraising the historical experiences of the two countries within a cross-country perspective.

Agricultural Development: An International Perspective.

Фундаментальный учебник по теории развития сельского хозяйства как отрасли. Рассматривается развитие сектора в историческом масштабе, специфика развития отрасли в развитых и развивающихся странах (с акцентом на развитие в странах с избыточной рабочей силой). В книге представлены следующие темы: аграрная экономика и её роль в общем процессе экономического развития, структурная трансформация, стратегии и модели развития сельского хозяйства и аграрная структура, взаимосвязь сельского хозяйства и промышленности, государственная политика в области сельского хозяйства, макроэкономика и сельское хозяйство, либерализация торговли сельскохозяйственной продукцией.