Replication Data for: “Reevaluating Agricultural Productivity Gaps with Longitudinal Microdata”

Recent research has pointed to large gaps in labor productivity between the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors in low-income countries, as well as between workers in rural and urban areas. Most estimates are based on national accounts or repeated cross-sections of micro-survey data, and as a result typically struggle to account for individual selection between sectors. This paper uses long-run individual-level panel data from two low-income countries (Indonesia and Kenya) to explore these gaps. Accounting for individual fixed effects leads to much smaller estimated productivity gains from moving into the non-agricultural sector (or urban areas), reducing estimated gaps by roughly 67 to 92%. Furthermore, gaps do not emerge up to five years after a move between sectors. We evaluate whether these findings imply a re-assessment of the conventional wisdom regarding sectoral gaps, discuss how to reconcile them with existing cross-sectional estimates, and consider implications for the desirability of sectoral reallocation of labor.近期研究表明，低收入国家的农业与非农部门之间，以及城乡劳动者之间，劳动生产率存在显著差距。现有多数估算基于国民账户体系或重复横截面微观调查数据，因此往往难以考量劳动者在部门间的个体自选择问题。本文采用来自两个低收入国家（印度尼西亚与肯尼亚）的长期个体层面面板数据，对上述生产率差距展开研究。控制个体固定效应后，估算得到的跨部门（或跨城乡）流动带来的生产率收益显著降低，估算的生产率差距缩小约67%至92%。此外，在跨部门流动后的五年内，并未观测到生产率差距的显现。我们评估了上述研究发现是否意味着需要重新审视关于部门间生产率差距的主流认知，讨论了如何将本研究结果与既有横截面估算结果相调和，并分析了其对劳动力部门间再配置合意性的启示。