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Globalization, Immigration, and Lewisian Elastic Labor in Pre–World War II Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2007

Gregg Huff
Affiliation:
Reader, Department of Economics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, UK. E-mail: [email protected].
Giovanni Caggiano
Affiliation:
Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RT, UK. E-mail: [email protected]..

Abstract

Between 1880 and 1939 Burma, Malaya, and Thailand received inflows of migrants from India and China comparable in size to European immigration in the New World. This article examines the forces that lay behind migration to Southeast Asia and asks if experience there bears out Lewis's unlimited labor supply hypothesis. We find that it does and, furthermore, that immigration created a highly integrated labor market stretching from South India to Southeastern China. Emigration from India and China and elastic labor supply are identified as important components of Asian globalization before the Second World War.

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ARTICLES
Copyright
© 2007 The Economic History Association

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