Convergence of per capita incomes and agricultural productivity in Africa

✍ Scribed by Angela Lusigi; Jenifer Piesse; Colin Thirtle

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 169 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1328(199801)10:1<105::aid-jid503>3.0.co;2-t

✦ Synopsis

This study is an investigation of convergence in per capita incomes and total factor productivity (TFP) for agriculture in the African continent. The concept of convergence, which is a basic prediction of the neoclassical growth model, has been shown to have considerable explanatory power. Here, the hypotheses of absolute and conditional convergence are tested for incomes and agricultural TFP using a panel of data for 32 African countries. Two methods of testing for convergence are applied. Both show that for this sample, conditional b convergence holds for the two growth measures and that education and investment appear to be the most important conditioning variables.