The agriculture TFP growth and labor allocation in the Brazilian economy

This paper analyzes the main forces related to the declining agricultural employment in the Brazilian economy, and its contribution to country s economic growth for the period 1970-2015. We employ a novel three sector growth accounting exercise, and a multisector growth model to estimate the various economic forces that serve to pull and push labor out of agriculture. Our results supports the conclusion that agriculture, whose rate of TFP growth tends to dominate that of the industrial and service sector, has had two roles on recent economic growth: the first is associated to TFP growth, and second is the labor transference to other sectors, and more specifically to the service sector. We also find evidence of sectoral TFP correlation suggesting technological spill over between sectors. Acknowledgement :