Some market effects of agricultural development on functional income distribution in developed countries

The influential variables include growth rates in: (1) land cultivated, (2) land-augmenting capital, (3) agricultural labor force, (4) human capital, and (5) labor-augmenting capital. The effects of changes in these factors on the three target variables are illustrated. By using empirically derived rates of change, the difficulty of limiting agricultural output by controlling land cultivated is shown. If clamped down hard enough, acreage limitations can be effective in holding the rate of output growth down to an acceptable level, but have an unvarying tendency to raise returns to land and to lower returns to labor.