The Malthusian Trap and Development in Pre-Industrial Societies: A View Differing from the Standard One

Clement Tisdell and Serge Svizzero

No 197551, Social Economics, Policy and Development Working Papers from University of Queensland, School of Economics

Abstract: Presents a simple economic theory explaining how some agriculturally based preindustrial societies (for example, in the Neolithic period) developed despite most of their population being subject to Malthusian dynamics. Their development depended on a dominant class (limited in size) extracting the economic surplus which could be used (among other things) to accumulate capital and advance knowledge and thereby, add to this surplus. Cities facilitated this process. Extraction of the surplus prevented increased population from dissipating it and curtailing development. Several early extractive and non-inclusive societies were long lasting. This is at odds with the theories of some contemporary development economists.

Keywords: Research; and; Development/Tech; Change/Emerging; Technologies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 2015-01-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gro, nep-his, nep-hpe and nep-ino
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/197551/files/WP59.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Malthusian Trap and Development in Pre-Industrial Societies: A View Differing from the Standard One (2015)
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:ags:uqsese:197551

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.197551

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Social Economics, Policy and Development Working Papers from University of Queensland, School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().