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and I analyze Taiwan's 1950s land reform, long seen as central to its economic takeoff—and to the East Asian Miracle. By digitizing archival data, we bring new causal evidence to the table. What we find is surprising! oliverwkim.com/papers/KimWang

8:05 AM · Sep 3, 2024

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Oliver Kim

@oliverwkim

Sep 3

After the 1950s reform, rice yields in

rose by 40%. The longstanding view—seen in Joe Studwell's excellent How Asia Works—is that land reform boosted productivity, launching

's extraordinary takeoff. We test this theory by digitizing township-level data for the first time.

We focus on the latter 2 phases of Taiwan's land reform. Phase 2 redistributed public lands, formerly held largely by Japanese sugar companies. Phase 3 broke up larger private estates and gave them to tenants. Together, 2 + 3 redistributed 24% of Taiwan's arable land.

Oliver Kim

@oliverwkim

Sep 3

Phase 2 did significantly boost yields, but the effect explains just 1/6 of the 1950-61 increase in rice yields. We find no statistical evidence that phase 3—the famous "land to the tiller" reform boosted rice yields at all.

Why did phase 2 and 3 differ so much? 2 freed tenant farmers from obligations to plant sugar, letting them to plant an extra crop of rice, boosting overall yields. 3, on the other hand, didn't change crop constraints—and may have made farms too small to be economically viable.

Land reform also had unexpected effects on industrialization! By boosting yields, phase 2 increased the retention of workers in agriculture + shrank the share in manufacturing. But by creating farms too small to support households, 3 pushed labor—mostly women—into factory work.

And yet Taiwan's rice yields went up ~40% in the 1950s. Why? Our null results suggests that other technical changes—increases in fertilizer, the introduction of high-yield varieties (spread through state agricultural extension services)—were more important.

Agriculture was likely still central to TW's growth story—but our paper shows that land reform can't be the main cause. But LR is not just about efficiency! Without it, the KMT regime may not have survived. The political economy remains central—but largely unanswerable thru

Oliver Kim

@oliverwkim

Sep 3

We hope this paper contributes to a revised understanding of Taiwan's rise and the East Asian Miracle. Comments / suggestions welcome! Here's the paer link again: oliverwkim.com/papers/KimWang

Tagging some people who may be interested in the history of East Asian development + land reform

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A 16% change in food supply, if it crosses a boundary separating sufficiency from insufficiency, could have a dramatic multiplier effect on GDP CAGR. It is not linear. Migration of labor into manufacturing is evidence of such a shift.

In the study, land reform contributed 16% of an overall 40 pct point rice yield increase—so it's only a ~6% increase over a decade, or ~0.6% a year

great paper

This is really awesome Oliver. Joe Studwell's book was one of the first I read when being converted to an economist in college.. Cool to see you working on these really tough questions