Abstract

The relationship between economic inequality and entrepreneurship has received the attention of scholars who have advised researchers to ‘use new data and seek new methods to study economic inequality.’ We examine a neglected source of such data and methods, Polly Hill’s The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana (1963) and Studies in Rural Capitalism in West Africa (1970), which stressed the agency of rural entrepreneurs. According to Hill, economic inequality is synonymous with rural tropical economies. Hill highlights inequality between richer and poorer farmers ignored by development economists. Her approach was cross-disciplinary, with an economics BA and anthropology PhD (supervised by economist Joan Robinson). She was a fellow in African Studies in Ghana and reader in Commonwealth Studies at Cambridge. In keeping with Hill’s cross-disciplinarity, this paper is jointly written by an economist and by an entrepreneurship professor.

摘要

经济不平等与创业之间的关系受到学者们的关注，他们建议研究人员“使用新数据并寻求新方法来研究经济不平等”。我们研究了这些数据和方法的一个被忽视的来源，Polly Hill 的《加纳南部可可农民移民》（1963 年）和《西非农村资本主义研究》(1970)，其中强调了农村企业家的能动性。希尔认为，经济不平等是热带农村经济的代名词。希尔强调了发展经济学家所忽视的贫富农民之间的不平等。她的方法是跨学科的，拥有经济学学士学位和人类学博士学位（由经济学家琼·罗宾逊监督）。她是加纳非洲研究的研究员和剑桥英联邦研究的读者。为了与希尔的跨学科保持一致，本文由一位经济学家和一位企业家学教授共同撰写。