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...

The authors examine the growth and convergence of total factor productivity in agriculture and manufacturing in a large sample of countries spanning many levels of development over the period 1967-1992. There is a widely held but rarely tested view that the rate of growth in agricultural...