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Excerpt
The Fable of Land Reform: Leases and Credit Markets in Occupied Japan, J. Mark Ramseyer, October 25, 2012, Paper. "Development officials and scholars routinely argue that land reform can raise productivity. It may not always do so, they write, but it can -- and during 1947-50 in Japan it did. Land reform may sometimes raise productivity, but it did not raise it in Japan. The claim that it did is a fable, a tale people tell and re-tell only because they wish it were true. A lease is a credit transaction -- a way for local elites (tied to local information networks in ways that banks can never be) to extend funds to farmers..." Link