Apart from the issues raised, Rwanda has an extremely problematic 'Development State' in which a) The main 'state' holding company is directly owned by the ruling political party; and b) the other one is fully owned by the Rwandan army!
Sorry if this is a side note but did Studwell address the responses to the 'The Inverse Relationship of Farm Size and Productivity' thesis a la Oliver Kim?
I want to know just how generalizable it is. Maybe the small size of smallholder farms in Ethiopia is connected to the low TFP presented in that article I pointed out last week?
excellent and thoughtful review.After subscribing to his theory when i read his book a decade ago, I personally have grown skeptical of studwell's work.Recent research in taiwan has called into question his claims about the impact of smallholder family farms and state policy.For example:
Apart from the issues raised, Rwanda has an extremely problematic 'Development State' in which a) The main 'state' holding company is directly owned by the ruling political party; and b) the other one is fully owned by the Rwandan army!
Thanks so much for this. I've got Studwell's book queued up to read, and it's really helpful to have a critical commentary to accompany it.
Thanks for reading Mark. Big fan of your substack btw
Thanks so much! Likewise
Thank you, guys! Your commentary on this book is so rich and useful.
Thank you for reading, and for your thoughtful comments.
Sorry if this is a side note but did Studwell address the responses to the 'The Inverse Relationship of Farm Size and Productivity' thesis a la Oliver Kim?
https://oliverwkim.com/papers/KimWang_Taiwan.pdf
I want to know just how generalizable it is. Maybe the small size of smallholder farms in Ethiopia is connected to the low TFP presented in that article I pointed out last week?
https://cgspace.cgiar.org/items/c9a9222d-cea8-4c5c-ba9c-7862b97f0c9d
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2312519121
excellent and thoughtful review.After subscribing to his theory when i read his book a decade ago, I personally have grown skeptical of studwell's work.Recent research in taiwan has called into question his claims about the impact of smallholder family farms and state policy.For example:
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2024/10/taiwan-east-asian-miracle-land-reform/680183/
personally i've grown more skeptical of the 'developmental state' narratives in general.