ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to examine two facets of the urban bias debate, and to do so in detail for two case-study countries, Tanzania and Fiji. The two aspects to be explored are trends in relative prices between agriculture and the rest of the economy, and the relationships of class interest to government policy which appear to push real agricultural prices in one direction or the other. By focusing on these selected features of the urban bias thesis, and subjecting them to the scrutiny of empirical evidence from two rather different countries, it is hoped to advance the critical assessment of the robustness and explanatory power of the model put forward by Michael Lipton. Fiji is interesting due to its contrasts both with the kind of economy which apparently stimulated the formulation of the urban bias model (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) and with Tanzania (a small island, open economy as against a large, continental, semi-closed one).
