Asian Village Economy at the Crossroads: An Economic Approach to Institutional Change

by Yujiro Hayami, Masao Kikuchi

Hardcover with lightly scored, marked and shelfworn jacket; one or two insignificant nicks to the edges. Bump on the upper edge of the rear board. Previous owner's name penned on FEP. Very good condition with clean and sound pages; all content is clear. CM

295 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1981

Reviews

[Tetsuya · Rating 5 out of 5]

The outcomes of these researches in the Philippines and Indonesia were one of the epoch-making studies in institutional economy. The authors analyzed, especially paying their special attention on rice harvesting systems, how institutional arrangement had changed after the high-yield variety (HYV) of rice (or the “Green Revolution”) diffused in rural areas in the Philippines and Indonesia during 1970s. They found different patterns of institutional change, i.e., “en route to stratification” and “en route to polarization” in the Philippines, depend on different historical socio-economic factors in the target villages. The former represented a pattern the village structure had stratified as HYV diffused among small farm households, whereas the latter’s village structure polarized into large wealthy and small poor farm households under the same technological change. Similar patterns were also found in Indonesia. These research outcomes indicate that new technology such as HYV can promote economic growth without undermining equality in a society, if a traditional mutual-help-oriented institutional arrangement is properly incorporated into the transitional process.