Abstract
One of the most original and provocative books about economic development written during the past 25 years is Michael Lipton’s Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias in World Development. This book deals with systematic distortions of the resource allocation of less developed countries. The central idea is that the most important class conflict in the Third World is not the conflict between labour and capital or between domestic and foreign interests; it is the conflict between country and town.
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Literature
The main source of the urban bias thesis is:
Lipton, Michael (1977), Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias in World Development. Temple Smith, London.
The original idea, however, is found in:
Lipton, Michael (1968), ‘Strategies for Agriculture: Urban Bias and Rural Planning’, in Streeten, Paul and Lipton, Michael (eds), The Crisis of Indian Planning: Economic Planning in the 1960s. Oxford University Press, London.
An earlier contribution to the same type of discussion — however, presumably unknown to Lipton — is:
Malamakis, Markos J. (1969), ‘The Theory of Sectoral Clashes’, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 4.
Haiti as an example of urban bias, especially when it comes to public investments, is dealt with in:
Lundahl, Mats (1979), Peasants and Poverty. A Study of Haiti. Croom Helm, London.
A summarizing, critical evaluation of the theory of urban bias is found in:
Varshney, Ashutosh (1993), ‘Introduction: Urban Bias in Perspective’, Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 29.
The entire issue of this journal contains articles that provide a critical evaluation of the urban bias thesis, and so does:
Currie, Lauchlin (1979), ‘Is there an Urban Bias? Critique of Michael Lipton’s Why Poor People Stay Poor’, Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 6.
Harriss, John and Moore, Mick (eds) (1984), Development and the Rural—Urban Divide. Frank Cass, London. (The articles included in this volume were also published as a special issue of Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3, April 1984.)
A formal discussion (that constitutes the foundation of the section on optimal taxation in the present chapter) of optimal taxation of farms and urban dwelling, respectively is found in:
Sah, Raaj and Stiglitz, Joseph E. (1992), Peasants versus City-Dwellers. Taxation and the Burden of Economic Development. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
A thorough discussion of price policy in agriculture is found in:
Krueger, Anne O. (1992), The Political Economy of Agricultural Pricing Policy Volume 5. A Synthesis of the Political Economy in Developing Countries. World Bank, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, and London; especially ch. 2.
For a discussion of the structural and the interest rates prevailing in different sectors, see:
Fry, Maxwell (1988), Money, Interest and Banking in Economic Development. Johns Hop-kins Press, Baltimore, MD, and London.
von Pischke, J. D., Adams, Dale W and Donald, Gordon (eds) (1983), Rural Financial Markets in Developing Countries. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, and London.
A short overview with emphasis on the effects of government interventions in the credit market is found in:
Poulson, Barry W. (1994), Economic Development. Private and Public Choice. West, Min-neapolis/St Paul.
The common interest of some groups in the towns and in the countryside is discussed in:
Véliz, Claudio (1963), ‘La mesa de tres patas’, Desarrollo Económico, Vol. 3.
A work that points to the problem of ascribing individuals to a given sector of the economy and hence of evaluating the impact of different interventions is:
Bigsten, Arne (1985), ‘What Do Smallholders Do for a Living? Some Evidence from Kenya’, in Lundahl, Mats (ed.), The Primary Sector in Economic Development. Croom Helm, London and Sydney.
The role of relative prices and marketing boards are discussed in:
Ellis, Frank (1984), ‘Relative Agricultural Prices and the Urban Bias Model: A Comparative Analysis of Tanzania and Fiji’, in Harriss and Moore, Development and the Rural—Urban Divide.
The income distribution study by Ahluwalia that is referred to in the text is:
Ahluwalia, Montek S. (1974), ‘Income Inequality: Some Dimensions of the Problem’, in Chenery, Hollis, Ahluwalia, Montek S., Bell, C. L. G., Dulay, John H. and Jolly, Richard, Redistribution with Growth. Oxford University Press, London.
Lipton has himself taken issue with the criticism of his thesis in:
Lipton, Michael (1984), ‘Urban Bias Revisited’, in Harriss and Moore, Development and the Rural—Urban Divide.
Bates’ main contribution to the urban bias theory is found in:
Bates, Robert (1981), Markets and States in Tropical Africa. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
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© 2002 Hans C. Blomqvist and Mats Lundahl
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Blomqvist, H.C., Lundahl, M. (2002). Urban Bias. In: The Distorted Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403914347_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403914347_7
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