His book with Yujiro Hayami, Agricultural Development: An International Perspective (1971) was considered a classic in the field and was translated into four other languages.
[2] In the book, Agricultural Development: An International Perspective, Ruttan and Hayami outline their hypothesis as follows: The [induced innovation] model attempts to make more explicit the process by which technical and institutional changes are induced through the responses of farmers, agribusiness entrepreneurs, scientists, and public administrators to resource endowments and to changes in the supply and demand of factors and products.
The state of relative endowments and accumulation of the two primary resources, land and labor, is a critical element in determining a viable patterns of technical change in agriculture.
Agricultural growth may be viewed as a process of easing the constraints on production imposed by inelastic supplies of land and labor.
(2006), Ruttan argues that large scale and long term government investment is necessary for the development of general purpose technologies and economic growth.