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 microsurvey 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%–92%. Furthermore, gaps do not emerge up to 5 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.

中文翻译：

---

利用纵向微观数据重新评估农业生产力差距


最近的研究指出，低收入国家农业和非农业部门之间以及农村和城市地区工人之间的劳动生产率存在巨大差距。大多数估计都是基于国民账户或微观调查数据的重复横截面，因此通常很难解释部门之间的个人选择。本文使用来自两个低收入国家（印度尼西亚和肯尼亚）的长期个人层面面板数据来探讨这些差距。考虑到个人固定效应后，由于进入非农业部门（或城市地区）而导致的估计生产率增益要小得多，从而将估计差距缩小了大约 67%–92%。此外，在行业之间转移后 5 年内，差距不会出现。我们评估这些发现是否意味着重新评估有关部门差距的传统观点，讨论如何将其与现有的横截面估计相协调，并考虑对劳动力部门重新分配的可取性的影响。