Agricultural productivity and European industrialization, 1890-1980.

The article estimates and analyzes differences in the productivity of labor and land, utilized by the agricultural sectors of five major European economies for a run of five years around 1910, and offers an account of the convergence and divergence levels between 1890 and 1980. In order to measure and to explain the gap in levels of per capita income and output per worker across European countries, a larger and more secure database is required, especially for agriculture. This is because early and successful examples of industrialization in Europe have been closely associated with improvements in the productivity of land, labor, and capital employed in primary production. Benign connections between high and increasing levels of agrarian productivity and the rise of an urban industrial economy are well understood. The problem now is to locate, measure, and explain contrasts in the performance of the agriculture of different nations across Europe, first at a point in time and then through time.