Technological Change and Price Effects in Agriculture: Conceptual and Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

The importance of technological advance to economic growth has become accepted fact. Yet the answers to questions of who adopts new technologies, how quickly, and at what cost to society remain elusive. While these issues are not unique throughout history, the advent of biological and chemical technologies that are both divisible and scale-neutral and the experiences referred to as the "Green Revolution" in the latter-half of the twentieth century throughout much of Asia have fostered a lively and long debate on the growth and particularly the distributional consequences of technological change in the agriculture of developing countries.