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Discussing the economic backwardness of Ireland in the late seventeenth century, Sir William Petty delivered himself of an apt, if indelicately worded, opinion. "Their Lazing," he wrote of the Irish, "seems to me to proceed rather from want of Imployment and Encouragement to Work, than from the natural abundance of Flegm in their Bowels and Blood." He continued this somewhat unorthodox analysis by listing the factors which destroyed or frustrated the incentives to increase production in Ireland; and, in the process, he succeeded in anticipating more than one modern idea on the subject. He even dealt with visible and disguised unemployment, and recommended, along lines fashionable today, that the surplus labour be employed in the creation of capital: improving rivers and constructing roads, bridges and buildings–"works," as he succinctly put it, "of much labour and little art."Although this article concerns neither Petty nor Ireland directly, the former's observations on the latter provide a useful introduction to its principal topic–the historical nature of economic underdevelopment. If we study the earlier history of today's highly developed economies, what sort of economic and social landscape do we find, and how does it compare with the structure of preindustrial economies in the mid twentieth century?

Political instability has been emphasized as a major source of uncertainty in Latin America. However,arbitrariness, i.e. the lack of constraints on the government, can also be seen as a major source of uncertainty in developing countries. Two dimensions of political uncertainty are thus distinguished, instability and arbitrariness. Empirically, low polity persistence is used for political instability, and low political constraints are used for arbitrariness. Unlike the usual approach in the literature, I relate this specific measure of political uncertainty to income per capita, rather than growth. The reason to explore this link is that if uncertainty leads to high interest rates, both capital and income per capita should be low. The conjecture that steady state income is lower with high political uncertainty leads to focus on its two dimensions. The data indeed suggest a strong positive relationship of political certainty, i.e. the combination of political constraints and polity persistence, with income per capita. Economic convergence may be conditional on the gradual process of elimination of political uncertainty. ; La inestabilidad ha sido enfatizada como una fuente de gran incertidumbre en América Latina. Sin embargo, la arbitrariedad, es decir la falta de frenos al gobierno, puede también ser vista como una fuente mayúscula de incertidumbre en países en desarrollo. Distingo en consecuencia dos dimensiones de incertidumbre política, inestabilidad y arbitrariedad. Empíricamente, uso la baja persistencia política como medida de inestabilidad, y la ausencia de contrapesos al poder ejecutivo para la arbitrariedad. A diferencia del enfoque usual en la literatura, no relaciono esta medida específica de incertidumbre política con el crecimiento, sino con el ingreso per cápita. La razón para explorar este nexo es que, si la incertidumbre lleva a mayores tasas de interés, tanto el stock de capital como el ingreso per cápita debieran ser bajos. La hipótesis de que el ingreso de estado estacionario es menor con alta ...

This study provides a political-economic analysis of the roots of and the relationship between, the process of underdevelopment and external migration in Nepal. While the internal institutional policies were responsible for initiating these two economic and demographic processes, British India's Gorkha recruitment policy contributed to their perpetuation. Today, Nepal's economy is trapped in a negative feedback cycle in which underdevelopment fuels outmigration which, in turn, propagates underdevelopment. Regardless of the nature of its socioeconomic impact, outmigration from the hills has emerged as a major economic survival factor for many migrant households and local economies. (Internat. Polit. Science Assoc.)