Development of the Labour Surplus Economy (Review Article )

The concept of surplus labour has featured prominently in the recent literature on economic development of underdeveloped, overpopulated economies. W. A. Lewis in his two celebrated articles [1J attempted a precise formu¬lation of the concept of surplus labour and sought to analyse its implications for the strategy of economic development in the context of a two sector model of economic growth. Messrs. J. C. H. Fei and Gustav Ranis have undertaken in this book1 an elaborate extension of the two-sector growth model of W. A. Lewis. The major directions in which the authors have sought to extend or elaborate the model and the main results of their efforts in this respect are contained in their earlier article “Unlimited Supply of Labour and the Concept of Balanced Growth”, published in the Pakistan Development Review, Winter 1961, Vol. 1, No. 3. The various sections of the article have now been expanded and elaborated into chapters of the book*.