刘易斯《具有无限供给的经济发展》英文.pdfVIP

W.A.Lewis on Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor 1 Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour 1. This essay is written in the classical tradition, making the classical assumption, and asking the classical question. The classics, from Smith to Marx, all assumed, or argued, that an unlimited supply of labour was available at subsistence wages. They then enquired how production grows through time. They found the answer in capital accumulation, which they explained in terms of their analysis of the distribution of income. Classical systems stems thus determined simultaneously income distribution and income growth, with the relative prices of commodities as a minor bye-product. Interest in prices and in income distribution survived into the neo-classical era, but labour ceased to be unlimited in supply, and the formal model of economic analysis was no longer expected to explain the expansion of the system through time. These changes of assumption and of interest served well enough in the European parts of the world, where labour was indeed limited in supply, and where for the next half century it looked as if economic expansion could indeed be assumed to be automatic. On the other hand over the greater part of Asia labour is unlimited in supply, and economic expansion certainly cannot be taken for granted. Asias problems, however, attracted very few economists during the neo-classical era (even the Asian economists themselves absorbed the assumptions and preoccupations of European economics) and hardly any progress has been made for nearly a century with the kind of economics which would throw light upon the problems. of countries with surplus populations. When Kevness GeneralTheory appeared, it was thought at first that this was the .book which would illuminate the problems of countries with surplus labour, since it assumed in unlimited supply of labour at t