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Imperial Policy or World Price Shocks? Explaining Interwar Korean Consumption Trend

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Myung Soo Cha
Myung Soo Cha
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Yeungnam University, Kyungsan, Kyungbuk, 712-749, South Korea.
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Abstract

Japan vigorously enforced wide-ranging developmental policies in colonial Korea, including a “green revolution” and an industrialization drive. Why did then colonial per capita food availability decline? Simulations using a dynamic general equilibrium model indicate that tax raises, which financed expanding public investment, did not lower, but raised consumption levels over time by accelerating accumulation. Food consumption fell because these policy efforts were inadequate to defeat population explosion initiated by a health campaign. The interwar agricultural depression exacerbated this Malthusian situation. Nevertheless, interwar Korean consumption trend compares favorably with most other rice producers, where the level of government intervention appeared suboptimal.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 731 - 754
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1998

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