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The influence of communications infrastructure on agricultural growth

Increased access to communications infrastructure is theorized to influence both the productiveness of the agricultural sector and the direction of technical change. The purpose of this thesis is to empirically examine the effects of the level of communications infrastructure on agricultural production and the direction of technical change.

A Cobb-Douglas production function was used to estimate an inter-country production function for fifty developing countries over a fifteen year period, 1970 to 1985. The production function estimates were then used to assess the influence of the communications variables, roads and radios, on the level of agricultural production and the direction of technical change.

Increased levels of radios and roads increased the level of agricultural production in developing countries. Increased levels of radios did not significantly affect technical change. However, increased levels of roads led to an increase in the labor-saving bias associated with research expenditures. / Master of Science

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/46149
Date05 December 2009
CreatorsDeaton, Brady J.
ContributorsAgricultural Economics, Norton, George W., Driscoll, Paul J., Alwang, Jeffrey R.
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Text
Formatviii, 84 leaves, BTD, application/pdf, application/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
RelationOCLC# 28898467, LD5655.V855_1993.D395.pdf

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