Editorial introduction

Industrialisation is central to structural change. Historically, as most economies have evolved, workers have left the land to take up jobs in factories, mines or construction sites, attracted by the possibility of higher and more stable wages. Early theorists of development saw industry, most particularly its manufacturing branch, as critical to the transition of economies from low income to higher income status because of the higher productivity and technological dynamism associated with manufacturing. ¹ When Arthur Lewis wrote of the possibility of a modern sector absorbing surplus labour at a constant real wage he had in mind that manufacturing would be the dominant ‘modern’ employer (Lewis, 1954). Similarly, when Ragnar Nurkse envisaged a group of new activities supporting each other in a pattern of balanced growth, these were to be principally new manufacturing activities (Nurkse, 1958). From the opposite perspective, when Albert Hirschman identified the key role of linkages in stimulating the new investment he pointed out that manufacturing creates more linkages than other branches of activity (Hirschman, 1958). Hence there is little doubt that from an early stage, industrialisation and economic development were seen as inextricably linked.