The International Tin Scheme

In his letter, earlier this year, inviting me to prepare this paper, the President of the International Economic Association, after referring to the more general subjects covered by Gerda Blau and David Walker, wrote: ‘ Professor Arthur Lewis is anxious that there should also be a paper on one of the more interesting actual commodity schemes and has suggested the tin scheme.’ With the stress of Section 4 of this Congress on economic growth and the instability of primary producing economies as a rule connected with their output of specific industrial raw materials or basic foodstuffs outpacing the growth in demand, this choice might, at first sight, appear surprising. After all, tin is the only major primary commodity, current production of which is unable to meet demand, although consumption in the free world is still limping behind the level it had reached as long ago as the end of the ’twenties.