Competing Hypotheses of Underdevelopment: A Thai Case Study

This paper will test three models of underdevelopment against the experience of Thailand from 1850 to 1940, when Thailand became a major rice exporter. The models are a dependency model, a staples model, and a supply and demand model of technical and institutional change. The technical and institutional change model provides the best explanation. Divergences between the goals of national security and economic development as well as those between the private interests of the elite decision makers and the social interest explain Thai underinvestment in increasing agricultural productivity and account in large part for the persistence of underdevelopment.