TRAPS EMBRACED OR ESCAPED
Elites in the Economic Development of Modern Japan and China
by Carl Mosk (University of Victoria, Canada)
About the Author Carl Mosk is Professor of Economics at the University of Victoria. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Victoria in 1988 he taught the University of California at Berkeley and at Santa Clara University. His research and teaching specialties are Economic History, Population Economics, and Development Economics. He has published a number of books on the Japanese economy including Japanese Economic Development: Markets, Norms, Structures (Routledge, 2007). He has worked on economic and demographic issues involving globalization during the period 1850-2000, publishing Trade and Migration in the Modern World (Routledge) in 2005. He resides in Victoria and on Pender Island in British Columbia with his wife Donna and three cats.
Countries commencing industrialization with relatively low levels of agricultural productivity, hence low wages, enjoy advantages that can also prove host to daunting challenges. The chief advantage is a relatively elastic supply of labor for manufacturing; the chief challenge is how to free up farm labor for factory employment through the raising of labor productivity in farming. Key to raising agricultural labor productivity is providing incentives to increase effort levels including hours worked — access to markets being crucial — and improving the quality of labor as measured by health indicators and educational attainment. The willingness of elites to promote improvements in infrastructure — physical infrastructure in the form of roads and railroads and hydroelectric systems; human capital enhancing infrastructure augmenting the educational attainment and health of populations in rural areas; and financial infrastructure — and to invest directly in factories is crucial to the process by which labor is transferred from farming to manufacturing activities. During the period 1850 to 1935 elites in China tended to resist the requisite changes while elites in Japan did not. This legacy played a crucial role in shaping the nature of post-1950 economic development in the two countries.
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