The distributional dimensions of revolutionary transition: Ethiopia

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate some of the distributional costs that have attended upon the process of revolutionary transition in Ethiopia, focusing on the crucial role of the rural sector in this regard. The central variable through which this sector influenced national economic performance was the marketed proportion of output. The study deals with this linkage and with the macroeconomic distributional outcomes of the growth process for the rural and urban sectors. The probable distributional implications of the Ten Year Plan are elicited, and the sobering findings provide the motivational force behind a few strategic policy considerations that are briefly outlined. It is argued that the national economic growth process was seriously imbalanced, and the sluggishness of agriculture meant that the growth was financed through an inflationary process which passed on the costs of accumulation substantially on to the poorer sections of the population.

Notes

This article is a shortened but otherwise unrevised version of a research report completed in Ethiopia in August 1983. The subsequent famine in rural Ethiopia makes the analysis and the policy implications of this article more rather than less relevant. Although I am grateful to several colleagues, notably Keith Griffith, Shyam Nigam, Vali Jamal, Ajit Ghose and Justin Maeda for helpful discussions, I alone am responsible for the views expressed in this article.