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Abstract
This paper analyses the evolution of agriculture’s participation
in the US gross domestic product (GDP) from 1960 to 2001. An
econometric model is run in order to identify the main variables that
determine this participation. From 1960 to 2001, there is a downward
trend of agriculture’s participation in the US GDP with a break from
1971 to 1973, in other words, agriculture’s participation in the US GDP
decreased from 1960 to 1970, increased from 1971 to 1973 and decreased
again from 1973 to 2001. The 1971-1973´s break in the downward
trend of agriculture’s participation is econometrically proved. Dataset
organized in graphs show grain and meat production steadily enlarged
from 1970 to 2001, what is closely related to the productivity increase
and federal grants to agriculture, despite the ratio of received/paid
prices decreased during this 31 years. An accounting model is presented
to show the main variables that determine agriculture’s participation
in a country’s GDP and an econometric model is derived from this
accounting model. Running this econometric model with 1973-2001´s
US dataset, the following variables are the most important to determine
the participation of agriculture in the US GDP: received/paid prices
ratio, lagged value of agriculture’s participation in the GDP, and total
factor productivity of the agriculture.