Economic Development with Unlimited Supplied of Labor英文资料.pdf

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 e. Classical systems stems thus
determined simultaneously e distribution and e growth, with the
relative prices modities as a minor bye-product.
Interest in prices and in e 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 upations 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 Kevnes's 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 the current price, and
also, in its final pages, made a few remarks on secular economic expansion