IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v68y2008i01p244-282_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Korean Expansion and Decline from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century: A View Suggested by Adam Smith

Author

Listed:
  • HO, JUN SEONG
  • LEWIS, JAMES B.
  • HAN-ROG, KANG

Abstract

The first price runs for Korean rice help us develop a Smithian physiocratic model to explain the low, stable prices of the eighteenth century and the rising, volatile prices of the nineteenth. Ownership rights provided incentives, and productivity after 1600 exceeded subsistence to achieve rural commercialization. Infrastructure investment from the late seventeenth century promoted development and prosperity, but declining investment, dysfunctional institutions, bad weather, and a population crash pushed the economy towards subsistence in the nineteenth. Decline saw rice monoculture, inflation, and price volatility even before imperialism's impact. Parallels with China suggest an “East Asian” premodern agricultural model.

Suggested Citation

  • Ho, Jun Seong & Lewis, James B. & Han-Rog, Kang, 2008. "Korean Expansion and Decline from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century: A View Suggested by Adam Smith," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(1), pages 244-282, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:68:y:2008:i:01:p:244-282_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050708000089/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Masahiko Aoki, 2011. "The Five-Phases of Economic Development and Institutional Evolution in China and Japan," Development Economics Working Papers 23196, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    2. Baharom, A.H. & Radam, Alias & Habibullah, M.S. & Hirnissa, M.T, 2009. "The Volatility of Thai Rice Price," MPRA Paper 14113, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Masahiko Aoki, 2013. "Historical sources of institutional trajectories in economic development: China, Japan and Korea compared," Chapters, in: Comparative Institutional Analysis, chapter 22, pages 439-469, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Ma, Debin & Yuan, Weipeng, 2013. "Discovering Chinese Economic History from Footnotes: the Living Tale of a Private Merchant Archive (1800-1850)," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 164, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    5. Duol Kim & Ki‐Joo Park, 2012. "A Cliometric Revolution In The Economic History Of Korea: A Critical Review," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 52(1), pages 85-95, March.
    6. Masahiko Aoki, 2013. "Comparative Institutional Analysis," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15474.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:68:y:2008:i:01:p:244-282_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.