刘易斯《具有无限供给的经济发展》英文(PDF 31页)

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. Asia's 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.
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