Agricultural Economics in Africa: Trends in Theory and Method
Explicit theory about the process of economic development is notoriously scanty and underdeveloped.** Thus this paper will deal as much with emerging challenges to implicit theorizing and neglected areas in explicit theory as with trends in what explicit theory exists. Although the state of economic theory relevant to the agricultural sector of developing countries still leaves much to be desired, there have been some fascinating trends in the last ten years. Over the same period there have been fundamental changes in methodology as well. The central focus of those concerned with the course of economic change in developing economies is consideration of how the rate of economic development can be effectively increased and maintained. Economists working on the agricultural sector are most interested in theory that deals either with the relationship between change in the agricultural sector and change elsewhere in the economy, or with means of accelerating and sustaining development of the agricultural sector itself, of interest not only because the course of events in agriculture affects aggregate development but also because satisfactory progress in agriculture contributes to national goals other than development. Agricultural development affects development in other sectors of the economy in several ways: through provision of goods and services needed elsewhere in the economy and for export; through generation of rural purchasing power which can be a critical component of the stimuli needed to evoke satisfactory rates of development of other sectors; and through generation of savings, investment, and manpower needed elsewhere. Agricultural
“Subsistence Agriculture”: Analytical Problems and Alternative Concepts
This article argues that the concept of "subsistence agriculture"—widely encountered and long used in the literature—is not meaningful enough to be analytically useful as usually employed and should be abandoned. Particularly important for policy is the fact that use of the term "subsistence agriculture" leads to implicitly treating all small-scale agriculture as a homogeneous residual made up of producers who vary little in their potential contribution to economic development. Data are presented which strongly suggest that small-scale agriculture in less-developed countries is not homogeneous so far as decision-making situations are concerned. The second half of the article considers development of an alternative set of criteria for classifying small-scale farmers that would reflect meaningful differences in decision-making experience and decision-making situations. A tentative set of such criteria for which data are now available, or could be developed with relative ease, are presented to illustrate the relevance of such a classification for development planning and policy.
Will They Ever Converge? Earnings of Immigrant and Canadian-born Workers over the Last Two Decades 1
Using Census data covering the 1980–2000 period, this article examines what outcomes would be necessary for today's recent immigrant cohorts to achieve earnings parity with Canadian-born workers. Our results show that today's recent immigrants would have to experience a drastic steepening of their relative age-earnings profile in the near future for their earnings to converge with their Canadian-born counterparts. The reason is simple: the greater relative earnings growth experienced by recent immigrant cohorts has only partially offset the drastic deterioration in their relative earnings at entry.