【主讲】Chaoran Chen (University of Toronto)
【主题】Capital Deepening, Technology Diffusion, and Agricultural Productivity
【时间】2015年12月28日 (周一) 15：30-17：00
【地点】上海财经大学经济学院楼602室
【语言】英文
【摘要】The differences of capital intensity between rich and poor countries are larger in agriculturethan in the non-agricultural sector. Meanwhile, the capital intensity of the U.S. agriculturalsector has been increasing in the 20th century. In this paper, I build a two-sector generalequilibrium model with technology diffusion that can account for the historical capital deep-ening in the U.S. agriculture. As the economy develops, farmers switch from a traditionaltechnology to a modern technology with a higher capital intensity. I use this model to studythe role of agricultural capital intensity differences across countries, and find that aggre-gate factors across countries can explain two thirds of their agricultural capital intensitydifferences, where technology diffusion is the key channel that explains most of these re-sults. Moreover, with differences in capital intensity and technology diffusion in agriculture,aggregate factors can explain three fourths of the international differences of agriculturalproductivity. Besides those aggregate factors, land misallocation in agriculture also preventscapital deepening and lowers agricultural productivity.
