Success and Failure of Reform: Insights from the Transition of Agriculture

摘要

More than twenty years ago, China embarked on its economic reform path by introducing the household responsibility system (HRS) in agriculture A few years later, Vietnam followed Both countries reduced price distortions and reallocated key land rightsfrom collective farms to rural households. The impact was dramatic. Productivity and incomes in both countries soared (Justin lin 1992; John McMillan, John Whalley, and Lijing Zhu 1989; Prabhu Pingali and Vo-Tong Xuan 1992). The reforms lifted hundredsof millions of rural households out of dire poverty (World Bank 2001) Economists praise the Chinese reforms as the "biggest antipoverty program the world has ever' seen" (McMillan 2002, p. 94) and have claimed that the reform policies have led to 'the greatest increase in economic well-being within a fifteen-year period in all of history" (Stanley Fischer 1994, p. 131).