On the Power of Macroeconomic Linkages to Explain Events in U.S. Agriculture

The significance for agriculture of macroeconomic events in the 1980s depends upon what elements in the macroeconomy are most strongly linked to agriculture and how these linkages function. It is idle to say, for example, that inflation poses particularly serious problems for agriculture in the 1980s unless we have evidence that inflation generally causes particularly serious problems for agriculture. This paper concentrates on the past literature and current state of evidence on such questions. The final section considers the possibility of scientifically defensible forecasts for the 1980s. It is short.