Transitional Forces in a Resource Based Economy: Phases of Economic and Institutional Development in Hawaii

Abstract

Abstract:We illuminate several important aspects of the nature and causes of growth and institutional change. To do this, we focus on the role resource pressures have played in the historic development of Hawaii's institutions. We discuss the Hawaiian story in the context of the natural co-evolution of production systems, organizational forms and authority structures in a resource dependent economy. We model the resource dependency as a multi-trophic ecologically based system. Productivity is a dynamic function of the available resource, human populations of laborers and wealth (capital) accumulation that funds management and governance through a nonproductive elite class. We use both archeological and historical evidence from natural resource use during the settlement and modernization of the Hawaiian economy. Hawaii's resources are first controlled by hierarchy, which intensifies over time. Decentralization occurs after Western contact (1778), though not immediately. Unlike many existing analyses of primitive economic development, there does not exist a monotonic relationship between population and resource pressure. In a model of second-best resource management, optimal governance changes as the balance between sustenance and other resource uses shifts.

The Importance of Connected Ocean Monitoring Knowledge Systems and Communities

“…distribution based on ecosystem understanding and dynamics (Tallis et al, 2012;Piroddi et al, 2015;Lynam et al, 2016). Models can also directly incorporate socio-ecological system decisionmaking and human feedback loops into information systems (Kaiser and Roumasset, 2014). This moves monitoring from an accounting process toward becoming a management tool.…”

Long Run Transitions in Resource-Based Inuit Communities

“…As resource pressures increase, Kaiser and Roumasset (2014) argue that returns to specialization, intensification, capitalization, technology and governance require additional centralization of authority and decision-making, which, in small populations with limited opportunities for external economies of trade, can be developed through hierarchy, if capital (wealth) accumulation is possible. A lack of managerial gains from formation of a governing elite, however, can limit hierarchical and/or institutional development, because limiting today's production in search of higher gains tomorrow is neither necessary nor possible.…”

“…Simple historical economies 3 provide opportunities for insights into economic theory that are more difficult to disentangle in more complex globally integrated economies (e.g. (Brander & Taylor, 1998;Fisk & Shand, 1970;Kaiser & Roumasset, 2014;Taylor, 2011)). Such simple historical cases, however, often lack sufficiently delineable evidence covering the range of evolutionary pressures needed to inform broadly across a developmental spectrum due to the lack of written historical records.…”

“…We take Kaiser and Roumasset's (2014) model as our starting point, combining theories of costs and benefits of governance and institutional change (New Institutional Economics, see e.g. (Ménard & Shirley, 2005)) and ecological models of resource dependency (Resource Economics, see e.g.…”

Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawai‘i. By Carol A. MacLennan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014. Pp. xi–378. $39.00, cloth.

“…The analysis would have been somewhat strengthened if the author had made more of an effort to draw on research from the eld of economic history, for example, Sumner La Croix and Price Fishback (2000). MacLennan's narrative rarely uses statistical analysis or theoretical models from economics or politics to establish or analyze historical trends and transformations, and this opens the door to further contributions by economists and economic historians, for example, recent articles by Brooks Kaiser and James Roumasset (2014) and Kaiser (2014).…”