The Political Development Cycle: The Right and the Left in People's Republic of China from 1953

Anton Cheremukhin, Mikhail Golosov, Sergei Guriev and Aleh Tsyvinski

American Economic Review, 2024, vol. 114, issue 4, 1107-39

Abstract: We quantify the effects of the political development cycle—the fluctuations between the Left (Maoist) and the Right (pragmatist) development policies—on growth and structural transformation of China in 1953–1978. The left policies prioritized structural transformation toward nonagricultural production and consumption at the expense of agricultural development. The right policies prioritized agricultural consumption through slower structural transformation. The imperfect implementation of these policies led to large welfare costs of the political development cycle in a distorted economy undergoing a structural change.

JEL-codes: D72 N15 N45 N55 O21 P21 P24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20220249 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E193344V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20220249.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20220249.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:114:y:2024:i:4:p:1107-39

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/aer.20220249

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().