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Disclaimer. Don't rely on these old notes in lieu of reading the literature, but they can jog your memory. As a grad student long ago, my peers and I collaborated to write and exchange summaries of political science research. I posted them to a wiki-style website. "Wikisum" is now dead but archived here. I cannot vouch for these notes' accuracy, nor can I say who wrote them.
Popkin. 1981. Public choice and rural development: Free riders, lemons, and institutional design. in Public Choice and Rural Development, Cliff Russell and Norman Nicholson, eds. Washington DC: Johns Hopkins Press.
Development economists long assumed that only markets matter, they ignored institutions
Peasants are maximizing production given their skills and technology: just give them education and help them use new technology, and they will turn "sand into gold."
There are two key problems to development in peasant societies, which may require nonmarket (but not noneconomic) solutions: free riding (Olson) and the lemon problem (Akerlof 1970).
"Effective institutions are ... free rider proof, not free rider prone; and appropriate divisions of labor can minimize problems with lemons." (75) "Rural development requires linkage between effort and reward."
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Popkin, Samuel (author) • Comparative Politics • Information • Development • Trust • Institutions • Origins of Institutions • Principal-Agent • Collective Action
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