Is agriculture the engine of growth?

Tiffin, R. and Irz, X. (2006) Is agriculture the engine of growth? Agricultural Economics, 35 (1). pp. 79-89. ISSN 0169-5150 doi: 10.1111/j.1574-0862.2006.00141.x

Abstract/Summary

We seek to address formally the question raised by Gardner (2003) in his Elmhirst lecture as to the direction of causality between agricultural value added per worker and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. Using the Granger causality test in the panel data analyzed by Gardner for 85 countries, we find overwhelming evidence that supports the conclusion that agricultural value added is the causal variable in developing countries, while the direction of causality in developed countries is unclear. We also examine further the use of the Granger causality test in integrated data and provide evidence that the performance of the test can be increased in small samples through the use of the bootstrap.