VoxDev Development Economics

S7 Ep44: Fifty years of Chinese growth: The gradualist reform strategy explained

33:38

In 1978, a farmer in rural China could not sell a sack of grain above the state quota, choose an employer, or move to the nearest city without a permit.

In this week's VoxDev Talk, Kaiji Chen and Tao Zha (both Emory University and Atlanta Fed) explain how China dismantled barriers like this one at a time. Gradualist reform first gave farmers the right to sell surplus grain at market prices.…