Essays on the Theory of Plantation Economy: A Historical and Institutional Approach to Caribbean Economic DevelopmentThis important book provides a fascinating insight into the conceptual underpinnings of the theory of plantation economy initiated by Lloyd Best and Kari Levitt in the 1960s as a basis for analysing the nature of the Caribbean economy. While acknowledging an intellectual debt to Latin American structuralists Raul Prebisch, Celso Furtado and Osvaldo Sunkel, and also to the work of Dudley Seers and William Demas, the authors develop an original and innovative analytical framework as a counter to more Auniversalist@ models which failed to take account of the Caribbean reality. Their work identifies the main features of the plantation economy as a hinterland characterized by subordination and dependency on the dominant metropole. Distinguishing between hinterlands of conquest, settlement and exploitation, Best and Levitt analyse the rules that determine this complex relationship with the metropole. Their economic theories are presented against a background of the historical factors that gave rise to the Astructural continuity@ of Caribbean economies and which now impede meaningful structural transformation.AThe book is clearly superior to other publications in the discipline. It offers a genuinely >indigenous= perspective on the challenges facing the Caribbean. It is both pioneering in its thrust and sophisticated in content and methodological approach. It is undoubtedly one of the most important economic texts ever produced on the Caribbean and should be compulsory reading for academics as well as policymakers. |
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activity agriculture assumed become capital Caribbean claims column commodity consumption corporations costs countries demand dependence distribution domestic dynamic earnings effect employment enterprise established exchange existence expansion expenditures export sector external fact fall figure final fixed force foreign framework further given Gross growth hinterland imports income increase industry initial inputs institutional interest intermediate investment island labour land Lewis limited liquidity manufacturing margins mature merchant metropole metropolitan organization output patterns plantation economy planters political population position problem production profit purchases pure plantation economy recorded region relation requirements resident residentiary result returns rise savings season Seers share slaves social staple statistical structure Studies supply surplus terms of trade tion traditional transfer transformation unit venture wage