I also was wondering about Polly's claim about inequality. And I am also wondering about Humberto's extension. Easterly writes of "high" inequality not of medium or low inequality. In reading Easterly, one thinks of the inequality associated with monarchies and oligarchies in which raw materials are "owned" by the monarch or oligarchs. Or one thinks of slavery or military oppression and perhaps genocide. Greater equality in such highly unequal societies would mean much more than land redistribution, a vaguely defined term in any case; since the legal rights associated with land ownership in such diverse countries as those described by Easterly mean quite different things. It would mean greater equality under the law -- a movement toward the rule of law. Regarding the development of Taiwan, Korea, and Japan; each adopted a land-to-the tiller program. But each also adopted a myriad of other programs, including policies that prevented small land parcels being aggregated to take advantage of economies of scale. In each country, the new owners of land also were granted, by the new governments, new legal and political rights that had not been available to these "classes" previously. Whether the mere redistribution of land was responsible for even part of the development is practically impossible to determine. Also noteworthy is the dominance of rice production in each country and that each country has in recent years exercised rights of exemptions to WTO principles relating to rice imports. Greater equality of rice farm ownership may be a factor holding back growth in those countries today rather than one that contributes to growth. It is worth remembering the old lesson from elementary social statistics that correlation does not imply causation. Pat Gunning