Geography and Agricultural Productivity: Cross-Country Evidence from Micro Plot-Level Data
利用高分辨率微观地理数据，量化地理和土地质量对各国农业生产力差异的作用，发现若按潜在产量生产，富国与穷国的农业产量差距将从214%降至5%。
Abstract We quantify the role of geography and land quality for agricultural productivity differences across countries using high-resolution micro-geography data and a spatial accounting framework. The rich spatial data provide for each cell of land covering the entire globe, the potential yield for 18 crops, which measures the maximum attainable crop output given soil quality, climate conditions, terrain topography, and a given level of cultivation inputs. While there is considerable heterogeneity in land quality across space, even within narrow geographic regions, we find that low agricultural land productivity is not due to unfavourable geographic endowments. If countries produced current crops in each cell according to potential yields, the rich-poor agricultural yield gap would virtually disappear, from 214% to 5%. We also find evidence of additional aggregate productivity gains attainable through spatial reallocation and changes in crop production.