Does Better Nutrition Raise Farm Productivity?
利用塞拉利昂家庭数据，检验卡路里摄入对农业劳动生产力的影响，发现显著正向效应，但边际效应随摄入增加而递减。
Household-level data from Sierra Leone are used to test whether higher caloric intake enhances family farm labor productivity. This is the notion behind the efficiency wages hypothesis, which has found only weak empirical support. A farm production function is estimated, accounting for the simultaneity in input and calorie choice. Instruments include prices, household demographic characteristics, and farm assets. The latter two sets of instruments are later dropped to explore the robustness of the results to different specifications of exogeneity. The exercise shows a highly significant effect of caloric intake on labor productivity, providing solid support for the nutrition-productivity hypothesis. The marginal effect on productivity falls drastically as calorie consumption rises but remains positive at moderately high levels of intake. One result is a fall in the effective price of food, a decline that is larger for households that consumer fewer calories.