Agricultural and Manufacturing Pollution: Labor Health and Technology Progress

Abstract

In this paper, we hold that it is the input of capital in agricultural production that is the main reason for agricultural pollution in developing countries under existing technical conditions. We try to integrate agricultural pollution into a general equilibrium model with environmental pollution caused by labor movement by setting up environmental "health factor" and undertake a comparative static analysis about the impacts of manufacturing and agricultural technology progress. The main conclusions of this article are that manufacturing and agricultural technology progress improve the environment under the model with agricultural pollution; however, the economic impacts of manufacturing and agricultural technology progress are different: manufacturing technology progress drops manufacturing output, while agricultural technology progress raises agricultural output.