Institutions and Agricultural Growth in Bolivia & New Zealand
This essay compares the experiences of agricultural development and overall development in two similar but very different countries: Bolivia and New Zealand. Similar since they both have small populations living from economies based on relatively abundant natural resources; and both are remote from the centres of the world economy. Both became largely self-governing in the first half of the nineteenth century; but there the similarities end, for today while New Zealand is a prosperous and relatively egalitarian society with high indices of human development, Bolivia remains poor and highly divided by class, ethnicity and region; a land of a few haves and many have-nots who live in unacceptable poverty.
To what extent can the different economic institutions that have evolved in the two countries explain these differences? Or are there other more powerful factors, including political institutions, that apply?
Steve Wiggins (ODI), 2008
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Last modified: 31 March 2009