Sir Arthur Lewis was the first development economist, the first Afro-Caribbean to hold a professorial chair at a British university and the first black man to win the Nobel prize for economics. However, he believed his contributions to the well-being of the poor through social and political activism were as important as his economics.

W. Arthur Lewis was one of the foremost intellectuals, economists, and political activists of the twentieth century. In this book, the first intellectual biography of Lewis, Robert Tignor traces Lewis's life from its beginnings on the small island of St. Lucia to Lewis's arrival at Princeton University in the early 1960s. A chronicle of Lewis's unfailing efforts to promote racial justice and decolonization, it provides a history of development economics as seen through the life of one of its most important founders. If there were a record for the number of "firsts" achieved by one man during his lifetime, Lewis would be a contender. He was the first black professor in a British university and also at Princeton University and the first person of African descent to win a Nobel Prize in a field other than literature or peace. His writings, which included his book The Theory of Economic Growth, were among the first to describe the field of development economics. Quickly gaining the attention of the leadership of colonized territories, he helped develop blueprints for the changing relationship between the former colonies and their former rulers. He made significant contributions to Ghana's quest for economic growth and the West Indies' desire to create a first-class institution of higher learning serving all of the Anglophone territories in the Caribbean. This book, based on Lewis's personal papers, provides a new view of this renowned economist and his impact on economic growth in the twentieth century. It will intrigue not only students of development economics but also anyone interested in colonialism and decolonization, and justice for the poor in third-world countries.

This volume, first published in 1982, is a collection of original essays written to honour Professor W. Arthur Lewis, 1979 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. The authors, an international group of distinguished scholars, address a varied set of specific issues reflecting Professor Lewis’ research interests, covering topics which include: technological change in agriculture, analyses of unemployment and income distribution, the role of government policy in the development process, the historical record of development, and the relationship between developed and developing nations. The book will be of interest to both the academic researcher and practicing professionals in the international organisations and national governments, and are particularly appropriate to graduate courses in economic development, cost-benefit analysis and economic history.

In this title, first published in 1978, Sir Arthur Lewis considers the development of the international economy in the forty years leading up to the First World War, with the adoption of the gold standard, a rapid growth in world trade, the opening up of the continents by the railways, vast emigration from Europe, India and China, and large-scale international investment. The book contrasts the relationship between prices, industrial fluctuations, agricultural output, and the stock of monetary gold, considering both the varying patterns of leading economies and then their net combined effect on the rest of the world. This is history which illuminates the contemporary economic climate in which it was written but also casts light upon our current economic crisis.

The three small economies that are the subject of this study were established as artificial colonial societies and have remained extremely vulnerable to the international capitalists system, a situation that has led to homegrown efforts to assert methods of development not associated with capitalism. After placing the developmental realities of the three countries in the general context of the Caribbean region and the global capitalist system, Rose (Siena College) critically examines the attempts of the three countries' experiments with socialism, begun in the 1970s. She reserves greater criticism for the United States as she turns her attention to U.S. government efforts to destabilize the countries in an effort to prevent the emerging of any socialist alternatives in an area it viewed as part of its sphere of influence. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.