Richard Grabowski (2002): East Asia, Land Reform and Economic Development https://delong.typepad.com/land-reform.pdf: "In trying to explain the economic success of East Asia (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) reference is often made to the fact that all three of these countries had extensive land reforms. These land reforms are thought to haue significantly contributed to the rapid growth of the region by eliminating the landlord class and providing the basis for an equitable distribution of the benefits of growth...
...However, it is often argued that these land reforms were an exogenous event or experience in that it required an environment of upheaval in which an external force, the United States, played a key role in making the reform possible. This paper argues that land reform in all three countries was the result of the unfolding of similar internal historical and economic forces over an extended period of time. Thus it makes more sense to think of land reform as an endogenous event determined by internal factors...
- Rather than following static comparative advantage, the state sought to foster the development of new export industries, thus creating new comparative advantages. This process involved subsidizing particular industries, and where the continued provision of these subsidies depended on performance, usually measured by exports (Wade 1990)...
- Effective government is important for both schools of thought...
- East Asia... became front line states in the Cold War... received significant amounts of aid from the United States... underwent significant land reforms... made possible by the support of the U.S. government...
- It is hard for an economist using an economic perspective to understand why landlords or the landed elite would have an innate tendency to be an obstacle to long-run economic development...
- Taiwan, Korea and Japan experienced similar rural development processes involving relatively rapid agricultural growth and commercialization.... Peasant unrest grew before World War II. However, this unrest was not of a radical nature... tenancy disputes.... Much of this conflict resulted in compromise.... By the late 1930s, the landlord-tenant system in all three regions had been altered in favor of farmer-tenants. The relative weakness of the landlord group provides the historical background for the land reforms that occurred in the postwar era...
#noted #2019-10-06
