The responses in New Zealand to the opportunities of refrigeration transformed farming in the Dominion during the half-century from 1890. Closer settlement and the extension of the cultivated area combined with more intensive farming methods to increase land productivity and real gross domestic product capita to the extent that living standards in New Zealand measured by the Human Development Index ranked first in the world by 1913. In contrast, real wages in the Dominion stagnated. The refrigeration-related trade boom had powerful income distribution effects that increased sharply the land rental-wage ratio during the years to 1920. Widely diffuse land ownership in New Zealand tempered the rise in income inequality, to set the Dominion apart from other land-abundant economies of the periphery. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand 2005.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Article provided by Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand in its journal Australian Economic History Review.
Volume (Year): 45 (2005) Issue (Month): 1 (03) Pages: 23-44 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML,
plain text,
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote),
ReDIF