The results of Saturday's presidential election in Zimbabwe are still up in the air, but one thing is clear: President Robert Mugabe has ruined his country's economy. A large part of this tragic story involves property rights. Between 2000 and 2003, Mugabe's government authorized the seizure of nearly all of the country's 4,500 large commercial farms, which were owned by a white minority. The official goal was to divide the land up among traditional black farmers.

In practice, this destruction of property rights led to a collapse in food production, foreign investment, lending, and land values. The consequences included widespread famine and the destruction of Zimbabwe's currency. Price inflation has reached an annual rate of more than 100,000 percent. Zimbabwe's economic collapse was addressed in our 2005 Research Reports article "What Can We Learn From Zimbabwe?" The author, Craig Richardson, is an Associate Professor of Economics at Salem College and a Visiting Research Fellow at AIER. He also wrote the book, The Collapse of Zimbabwe in the Wake of the 2000-2003 Land Reforms.

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