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Are Manufacturing and Agriculture Complementary? Insights from Sweden

  • Manuchehr Irandoust ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: March 28, 2025

Abstract

Structural economic transformation theories have emphasized the role of agricultural development in industrialization and vice versa. The question is whether industrial development and agricultural development were complementary. Using unique data from Sweden (1800–2020), we investigate the causal link between agriculture and industry. In the presence of structural shifts and breaks, the causal direction is established using the Fourier Granger causality technique. Based on the results, Sweden supports the growth complementarity hypothesis. This indicates that sectoral convergence tendencies are encouraged by the larger expansion of industry, which frequently spreads to agriculture and vice versa.

JEL ClassificationCodes: E60; E66

Corresponding author: Manuchehr Irandoust, Independent Researcher, Mellbystrand, Sweden, E-mail:

Acknowledgements

The feedback from two anonymous referees is highly valued. The standard disclaimer applies.

  1. Conflict of Interest: There is no conflict of interest to declare.

  2. Research funding: This research received no financial support.

  3. Data availability: All data used in this study is publicly available online. The information on the sources of data is provided in the text and references.

Appendix A

see Figure A1 and Table A1.

Figure A1: 
Value added agriculture, value added manufacturing, and trade openness.
Figure A1:

Value added agriculture, value added manufacturing, and trade openness.

Table A1:

Descriptive statistics of value-added agriculture, value added manufacturing, and trade openness, 1800–2020, n = 221.



Variable
Mean SD Skewness Kurtosis
AGRI 6,836.17 10,812.95 1.50 3.63
MANUF 91,801.13 200,267.40 2.27 6.89
TOP 43.95 19.15 0.79 2.95

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Received: 2024-08-23
Accepted: 2025-03-10
Published Online: 2025-03-28

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