During my interview at the Philippine Embassy for my Monbukagakusho scholarship application, the first question from the panel was, “Why do you want to study in Japan?” My candid answer was “Some of my favorite agricultural economists are Japanese, and it is a fact that there is much to learn from the experiences and expertise of Japan in economic development.” One of the panelists immediately made a follow up question, “Like who are your favorites?” I answered, “Like Dr. Yujiro Hayami, Keijiro Otsuka, Sam Fujisaka (actually, a sociologist).”
And so when my adviser informed me that Dr. Yujiro Hayami will be visiting Kochi University and will be giving a seminar, I was filled with quiet anticipation. And when my adviser later added that he arranged for graduate students to have a short coffee time with him, I was even more excited, but felt a tinge of dread. There are not many occasions when you get to talk with famous people whom you know only through their works.
His Seminar: What is Development Economics? "Physics: Why sky is blue and forest is green?
Development Economics: Why some countries are poor and some countries are rich?" - Y. Hayami
This quote is in his first slide reflective of his ability to write economics in simple yet insightful way, as can be seen in his numerous books and journal publications. One can not mistake economics for mathematics in his work; rather one will appreciate economic theory and see its logic in reality.
(I wish I could include here excerpts on what he said in the seminar but he gave the seminar in Nihongo so except for his occasional reference to his slides written in English, I didn’t understand much of what he said which is very unfortunate. Nevertheless, you can access his presentation for reference at http://www.savefile.com/files/747944.)
There is much to think about just by reading the information from his slides. Mine was my old favorite question to foreign economists: What has gone wrong in the Philippine case?
What has gone wrong in the Philippines?
If the Philippine economy was not too far from Japan’s in the 1960s, where did we go wrong? Why have we progressed but not as far as Japan or Taiwan or Malaysia, and now Thailand?
“That is a good question, but a difficult one to answer. My hypothesis is that until now, the Philippines has not overcome the problem of wide discrepancy in income." He thinks this is probably a remnant of the long Spanish rule characterized by landlord and peasant system. He also agrees that part of what has gone wrong is in the cultural-institutional sub-system in the social system (see his slide on the interrelated developments in a social system).
Is there hope for development in the Philippines?
“Yes, I think so.” One of the strengths of the Philippines is education. Most of the young children go to school, and literacy is high. The emerging problem here is that a lot of your educated people migrate and end up working for other nations.
As I went on to discuss my topic of interest: what factors determine income diversification or what factors promote or limit rural farmers and fishermen from taking advantage of off-farm or non-farm opportunities, he added that one route to reduce poverty and inequality is to capture the opportunities that the current globalization wave has created. He discussed with passion the potential merits of establishing a rural trading network that will allow small rural farm households even in the hinterlands to participate and take advantage of the global demand for labor-intensive goods especially from developed countries. Yet this production and trading network will have to be built on a community-based contract enforcement mechanism as he calls it. It will not be fast and automatic, but it is a good direction for a more balanced urban-rural development.
As he has concluded in one of his recent papers Globalization and Rural Poverty (2006),"Indeed, the current globalization wave has created a great opportunity for rural communities in developing economies to reduce poverty and inequality. However, whether this opportunity can be captured by the rural poor depends on how wise public investments are allocated in their support for infrastructure including education and extension services. The needed support should include improvements in the efficiency of markets by building institutions to protect property rights and enforce contracts while the government should refrain as much as possible from direct intervention into markets."
Although the last few words of the quote is ironic in that Japan is known to be an utter protectionist for selected commodities and a generous provider of subtle direct subsidies, indeed it is probably the shrewdness of the Japanese government in allocating public investments and building institutions that brought them to where they are now--two areas the Philippine government probably needs improvement.
"I am better in writing than in speaking."
Here's an incomplete list of the books he has written:Anatomy of a peasant economy: a rice village in the PhilippinesBeat that smile!
Yujiro Hayami
A Rice Village Saga: The Three Decades of Green Revolution in the Philippines
Yujiro Hayami and Masao Kikuchi
London: Macmillan/Barnes & Noble/International Rice Research Institute, 2000.
Development Economics: From the Poverty to the Wealth of Nations, Second Edition
Yujiro Hayami
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Communities and Markets in Economic Development
Masahiko Aoki and Yujiro Hayami (eds.)
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Agricultural Development: An International Perspective
Professor Yujiro Hayami and Professor Vernon W. Ruttan
Asian Village Economy at the Crossroads: An Economic Approach to Institutional Change
Yujiro Hayami
The political economy of agricultural protection: East Asia in international perspective
Kym Anderson, Yujiro Hayami, and Aurelia George
The agrarian origins of commerce and industry
Yujiro Hayami and Toshihiko Kawagoe.
St. Martin's Press, New York, 1993
Cheryll, Filipino, poor country; Dr. Hayami, Japanese, rich country; Saharia, Bangladesh, poor country
