Douglas Gollin
Douglas Gollin is the Lead Academic for the IGC Ethiopia team.
Doug Gollin’s research focuses on economic development and growth, with particular interests in agriculture and structural transformation. His work brings a general equilibrium perspective to issues such as: sectoral differences in productivity; the impacts of agricultural technologies; the role of transport costs in shaping spatial patterns of development; the importance of small firms and self employment in poor countries; and the macroeconomic effects of disease.
Doug Gollin joined Oxford in October 2012 after spending sixteen years on the faculty of Williams College in the United States, where he retains an affiliation. He is a visiting fellow at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He chairs the Standing Panel on Impact Assessment of the CGIAR, a consortium of international agricultural research organizations. He also works with the International Growth Centre and a number of NGOs involved in policy-oriented research on development.
He is currently a Managing Editor of the Journal of African Economies and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Development Economics and Oxford Development Studies.
Doug Gollin holds an AB degree from Harvard University and an MA from Yale University. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1996.
Content by Douglas Gollin
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Data Item
Data: The Agricultural Productivity Gap in Developing Countries
According to national accounts data for developing countries, value added per worker is on average four times higher in the non-agriculture sector than in agriculture. Taken at face value this “agricultural productivity gap” suggests that labor is greatly misallocated across sectors in the developing world. In this paper we draw on new micro evidence to ask to what...
28 Feb 2019
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Publication - Policy Brief
Small-scale farmers and large machines: The why and how of agricultural mechanisation in Ghana
Despite the small farm sizes and large investment required for agricultural machinery, cereal-producing farmers in Ghana have widely adopted tractor plowing. This brief uses a case study of Yendi district to understand how the sharing of tractor service works, and the impact that tractor use has on the use of labour and other inputs. The research finds that the...
18 Jun 2018 | Douglas Gollin, Frances Cossar
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Publication - Policy note
Agricultural transformation and urbanisation in Uganda
20 Jan 2017 | Douglas Gollin, Ritwika Sen
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Blog post
Kampala, where urbanisation is not synonymous with industrialisation
Many Sub-Saharan African cities have been growing at unprecedented rates. For example, according to the most recent census, in Kampala, the estimated resident night-time population currently lies at 1.5 million people. Some projections from the World Bank suggest that the city could expand to an estimated 9.1 million people by 2050. This figure does not include those people...
7 Dec 2016 | Douglas Gollin, Astrid Haas
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Blog post
Urbanisation with and without Industrialisation
Despite established historical links between industrialisation and urbanisation, newer patterns of urbanisation, observed across much of the developing world, suggest that the drivers of urbanisation matter. Today’s blog looks at the difference between resource-led urbanisation and more the traditional form of industrialisation-led urbanisation that we associate with...
9 Mar 2016 | Dietrich Vollrath, Remi Jedwab, Douglas Gollin
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Project
Agricultural mechanisation in Ghana
Mechanisation of agriculture is occurring in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, but there remains limited understanding of the economic, social, and institutional conditions underlying this trend. There has been a striking growth in the use of agricultural machinery in Ghana since the early 2000s. This seemingly contradicts perceptions of agricultural stagnation and also runs...
16 Dec 2015 | Douglas Gollin
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Project
Transportation Costs, Food Markets, and Structural Transformation in Tanzania
The growing wealth of nations has, throughout history, been associated the movement of people off the land, out of subsistence agriculture and into more dynamic forms of economic activity, in large-scale agriculture, in export-oriented manufacturing and in the services sector. Underpinning this transformation is rising productivity in agriculture which provides for both...
10 Oct 2014 | Christopher Adam, David Bevan, Douglas Gollin, Beatrice Kalinda Mkenda
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Project
Agricultural productivity growth and economic development in an open economy: The case of Ghana
Reducing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa will entail the movement of people out of quasi-subsistence agriculture, the sector in which most of the poor currently earn their livelihoods. This structural transformation can occur both through improving productivity in smallholder farms and creating opportunities elsewhere in the economy, whether in agriculture or non-agriculture....
4 Sep 2014 | Douglas Gollin, Francesco Caselli, Richard Rogerson
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Publication - Working Paper
Agriculture and Structural Transformation in an Open Economy: The Case of Ghana (Working Paper)
3 Apr 2012 | Francesco Caselli, , Douglas Gollin
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Publication - Policy Brief
Agriculture and Structural Transformation in an Open Economy: The Case of Ghana (Policy Brief)
1 Apr 2012 | Francesco Caselli, , Douglas Gollin
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Publication - Policy Brief
Transportation Costs, Food Markets, and Structural Transformation in Tanzania (Policy Brief)
31 Mar 2012 | Christopher Adam, David Bevan, Douglas Gollin, Beatrice Kalinda Mkenda
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Publication - Working Paper
Transportation Costs, Food Markets and Structural Transformation in Tanzania (Working Paper)
31 Mar 2012 | Christopher Adam, David Bevan, Douglas Gollin, Beatrice Kalinda Mkenda
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Publication - Working Paper
The Agricultural Productivity Gap in Developing Countries (Working Paper)
1 Feb 2011 | Douglas Gollin, David Lagakos, Michael Waugh
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Publication - Policy Brief
The Agricultural Productivity Gap in Developing Countries (Policy Brief)
1 Feb 2011 | Douglas Gollin, David Lagakos, Michael Waugh
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Project
The Agricultural Productivity Gap in Developing Countries
This study seeks to understand why, in most developing countries, measured value added per worker is so much lower in agriculture than in other sectors of the economy. Simple two-sector models predict that value added per worker should be equal in agriculture and “non-agriculture,” and yet in the average developing country, national accounts data show that value added...
1 Jan 2011 | Douglas Gollin, David Lagakos, Michael Waugh, Sarah Saeed