Agricultural Productivity and European Industrialization, 1890-1980

This exercise in comparative measurement and analysis surveys published indicators for labour and land productivities in European agricultures between 1890 and 1980.It exposes the empirical flaws and above all the range of conceptual difficulties involved in defining agricultural outputs and inputs...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Economic history review 1992-08, Vol.45 (3), p.514-536
Main Authors: O'Brien, Patrick K., Prados, Leandro, La Escosura, De
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural land
Agricultural production
Agriculture
Crop economics
Crops
Farm economics
Final output
History
Industrial agriculture
Industrialization
Labor force
Productivity
Purchasing power parity
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Summary:This exercise in comparative measurement and analysis surveys published indicators for labour and land productivities in European agricultures between 1890 and 1980.It exposes the empirical flaws and above all the range of conceptual difficulties involved in defining agricultural outputs and inputs for purposes of international comparison. Yet the numbers do reveal how the industrialization of continental economies was constrained (and severely constrained in Mediterranean Europe) compared with that of the UK by malign historical legacies of high ratios of labour to land and an unfavourable ecological environment for the diffusion of the animal intensive technology of the first agrarian revolution.
ISSN:0013-0117
1468-0289
DOI:10.2307/2598051