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W. Arthur Lewis In Retrospect, Charles M. Becker, Terry Ann Craigie

Economics: Faculty Publications

This paper reviews several themes from the writings of W. Arthur Lewis, both the first black Nobel Laureate in Economics and the first from a developing country, and examines them from the perspective of two to five decades of hindsight. The paper emphasizes three main interrelated aspects; economic growth, economic dualism, and "the evolution of the economic order"-the forces that drive the prices of goods and relative incomes across countries. Lewis's messages still resonate today, as he foresaw the rise of industrial exports from developing countries-and also that it would not end the large gaps among nations' standards of living. …