In this paper, we examine the economic policies that might allow a developing rural economy to escape from the poverty trap characterized by a subsistence level of per capita consumption in the long run. In our model where labour is combined to land available in fixed quantity to produce a...

The Ricardian theory of constantly decreasing returns on additional units of a self-renewable resource states that "best resources are used first, except for location and technical change." Using modern economic theory, the authors show this result to be an unfounded prejudice. Their model of...