The study of economic history reveals a number of different patterns when it comes to agricultural production and the standard of living of a given population in a region. Let's think about the issue in very simple terms. Imagine that the standard of living for a population in a region is determined by the amount …
Alleviating rural poverty
What theories and values ought to underlie our best thinking about global economic development? Along with Amartya Sen (Development as Freedom), I believe that the best answer to the ethical question involves giving top priority to the goal of increasing the realization of human capabilities across the whole of society (The Paradox of Wealth and …
Fair prices?
We live in a society that embraces the market in a pretty broad way. We accept that virtually all goods and services are priced through the market at prices set competitively. We accept that sellers are looking to maximize profits through the prices, quantities, and quality of the goods and services that they sell us. …
Rebuilding employment
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago hosted a two-day conference in Detroit this week on the subject of work force adjustment (link). It was convened by the Federal Reserve Bank, the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, and the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. This is one of the many efforts underway to attempt …
Technology innovation in Chinese agriculture
It is a commonplace in world history to observe that China had achieved a high level of sophistication in science, medicine, and astronomy by the Middle Ages, but that some unknown feature of social organization or culture blocked the further development of this science into the expansion of technology in the early modern period. Chinese …
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Poverty, growth, and sustainability
The extent and depth of poverty in the world today is a crushing and immediate problem. The economies of most countries in the world continue to reproduce life circumstances for the extremely poor that make it all but impossible for them to participate in normal, productive lives. The Millenium development goals that were endorsed by …
China’s agricultural history
Consider the discipline of the agricultural history of China. The following represent a sampling of research problems concerning the social and economic history of rural China in recent research: What were the patterns of population growth, growth of cultivated land, and growth of net output, in traditional China? (Perkins 1973) What was the distribution of …
Economic history analyzed
The history of a region or people encompasses a multitude of aspects of social life: culture, religion, political institutions, social movements, environmental change, technology, population—and the circumstances and processes of economic change that the region undergoes. One does not need to be a reductionist in order to observe that the economic circumstances a society experiences, …
How do new ideas get used?
Economic development and growth depend chiefly on innovation -- new products, processes, materials, and modes of organization that can create new opportunities in the marketplace. Business creation and economic growth depend upon innovation. This means creating new products that consumers want or need, improving the performance or safety of the product, or improving the cost …
Cooperatives within markets
In a recent post on ChangingSociety I considered the question whether households in a rural community might be able to achieve energy self-sufficiency based on the cultivation of crops such as cattails and community production of ethanol. One question raised there is whether it is possible to estimate the land and labor that would be …
Understanding Society 