Remarks at IFD Panel – International Forum on Development, New York, October 2005

In the Caribbean we have had various economic theories and strategies of development. In fact we could say that Caribbean society was created by a theory – the theory of Mercantilism in the 17th and 18th centuries – which gave rise to the Triangular Trade, including the African slave trade, the plantation system and slavery. The Ricardian theory of comparative advantage came later, in the 19th century, providing a retrospective justification for a pattern of specialisation in primary agricultural commodities that had developed in an earlier period. In the 1950s W. Arthur Lewis stood the Ricardian theory on its head by using it as the rationale for an industrialization strategy based on cheap labour, which replaced agricultural land as abundant factor and therefore as the source of comparative advantage. This was the development strategy of the 1950s and 1960s.

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