Stability or Decline? Demand or Supply?

Abstract

a period of expansion in seventeenth century, stability in eighteenth century, and decline in nineteenth century. Professor Myung Soo Cha asks us to clarify whether expanding, stable, and declining output is aggregate or per output and to define productivity. Reliable figures on input and output for pre-twentieth-century Korea (the primal approach) are still difficult to ascertain and generally unreliable (as acknowledged by Professor Cha). Difficulty and unreliability make a simple calculation of aggregate output still in future. Turning to per output, K. J. Park and D. H. Yang heroically tried to assess tilled acreage per capita from seventeenth to nineteenth centuries using government censuses (which they corroborated with household registers and found generally reflective of trend) and government land surveys for taxation. They conclude, however, that a simple division of acreage by populace tells us very little unless we also consider double-cropping and nonagricultural rural employment.1 Because primal approach is not yet possible,2 Professor Cha suggests that we use dual approach, which we have already done elsewhere,3 and which he acknowledges. He criticizes us for not repeating that approach in this journal and offers data using dual approach to argue that, contrary to our argument, productivity declined from seventeenth century onwards. Rather than repeat ourselves, we attempted another approach to assess productivity by looking for trends in prices. Professor Cha questions whether it is possible to infer productivity from prices, and takes issue with factor and asset prices we published elsewhere. He argues: the evidence on factor and asset prices indicate that marginal productivity of land and labor declined consistently, rather than expanded, stabilized, and then declined in pre colonial centuries. We will take these points in turn. Productivity Glimpsed Through Commodity Prices