Download or read book Lets Get Mechanized - Labor Market Implications of Structural Transformation in Bangladesh written by Md. Fuad Hassan and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bangladesh is experiencing the structural transformation of its economy with increasing employment in the manufacturing sector, particularly the garment industry. At the same time, agricultural activities become more and more mechanized. These processes have major effects on rural labor markets, and thus on rural livelihoods. This study examines the implications of agricultural mechanization on agricultural wages using a unique data set of monthly wages and rice prices over the period from 1995 to 2015. Employing a dynamic panel model, estimated by generalized methods of moments, we find that increasing agricultural mechanization is associated with an increase in real agricultural wages, both in the short-run and the long-run. Hence, our estimation results dispel the concern that machines are substitutes for manual labor and reduce employment opportunities in rural Bangladesh. This has important implications for policy makers aiming for a reduction of rural poverty and the interventions which reduce extensive rural-urban migration and create more employment opportunity in the agricultural sector.