Arthur Lewis (economist)

Sir Arthur Lewis
Sir William Arthur Lewis, official Nobel Prize photo
Born	William Arthur Lewis (1915-01-23)January 23, 1915 Castries, Saint Lucia, British Empire
Died	June 15, 1991(1991-06-15) (aged 76) Saint Michael, Barbados
Nationality	Saint Lucia, United Kingdom
Fields	Economics
Institutions	LSE (1938-1948) University of Manchester (1948-1958) University of West Indies (1959-1963) Princeton University (1963-1991)
Alma mater	LSE
Thesis	The economics of loyalty contracts (1940)
Doctoral advisor	Sir Arnold Plant
Known for	Development Economics Industrial structure History of the World Economy
Notable awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1979)
Spouse	Glady Jacobs (m. 1947), two daughters

Sir William Arthur Lewis (January 23, 1915 – June 15, 1991) was a Saint Lucian economist well known for his contributions in the field of economic development. In 1979 he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.

Biography

Arthur Lewis was born in Castries, Saint Lucia, then still a British territory in the Caribbean, as the fourth of five children of George and Ida Lewis, who had migrated from Antigua shortly after the turn of the century. George Lewis died when Arthur turned seven and consequently all five Lewis children were raised by their mother. Arthur was a gifted student and was promoted two classes ahead of his age. After finishing school at the age of fourteen, Lewis worked as a clerk, while waiting to take his university entrance exam. During this time he met Eric Williams, the future first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, and the two were to remain lifelong friends.

After gaining his Bachelor of Science degree in 1937 and a Ph.D. degree in 1940 at the London School of Economics he was a member of the staff at the LSE until 1948. Lewis lectured at the University of Manchester from 1948 until 1957. When Ghana gained independence in 1957, Lewis became the country's first economic advisor, helping to draw up its first Five Year Development Plan (1959–1963). In 1959 he was appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies. In 1963 he was knighted, and was also appointed a University Professor at Princeton University, a position he retained until his retirement in 1983. In 1970 Lewis became the first president of the Caribbean Development Bank.

He received the Nobel prize in Economics in 1979 with Theodore Schultz .

He died on June 15, 1991 in Bridgetown, Barbados and was buried in the grounds of the St Lucian community college named in his honour.

Lewis' achievements have been recognised by the naming of "The Arthur Lewis Building" (opened in 2007) at the University of Manchester where he once lectured.

Key works

The "Lewis Model"

Lewis published in 1954 what was to be his most influential development economics article, "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour" (Manchester School). In this publication, he introduced what came to be called the Dual Sector model, or the "Lewis Model."

In this work Lewis combined an analysis of the historical experience of developed countries with the central ideas of the classical economists to produce a broad picture of the development process. In his story a "capitalist" sector develops by taking labour from a non-capitalist backward "subsistence" sector. At an early stage of development, there would be available an "unlimited" supply of labour from the subsistence economy which means that the capitalist sector can expand without the need to raise wages. This results in higher returns to capital which are then reinvested in further capital accumulation. In turn, the increase in the capital stock leads the "capitalists" to expand employment by drawing further labor from the subsistence sector. Given the assumptions of the model (for example, that the profits are reinvested and that capital accumulation does not substitute for skilled labor in production), the process becomes self-sustaining and leads to modernization and economic development.

The point at which the excess labor in the subsistence sector is fully absorbed into the modern sector, and where further capital accumulation begins to increase wages, is sometimes called the "Lewisian turning point" (or "Lewis turning point") and has recently gained wide circulation in the context of economic development in China.

The Theory of Economic Growth

Lewis published The Theory of Economic Growth in 1955 in which he sought to “provide an appropriate framework for studying economic development,” driven by a combination of “curiosity and of practical need.”

See also

• Black Nobel Prize laureates
• Dual sector model

References

• Biography
• Biography on the 'Sir Arthur Lewis Community College' website
• Breit, William and Barry T. Hirsch (Eds. 2004). Lives of the Laureates(4th ed.). Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-52450-3.
• Lewis, William Arthur (2003). The Theory of Economic Growth. London: Taylor and Francis, 453 pages. ISBN 0-415-31301-5. 

External links

• Arthur Lewis Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
• St. Lucian Nobel Laureates
• Nobel e-Museum: Arthur Lewis
• Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, Saint Lucia
• Sir Arthur Lewis – Prize Lecture
• IDEAS/RePEc
• The Lewisian Turning Point and Its Implications to Labor Protection (The Institute of Population and Labor Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)