Sir Arthur Lewis : a biography / Barbara Ingham and Paul Mosley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ingham, Barbara.

Contributor:

Mosley, Paul.

Hiram G. Haney Fund.

Series:

Great thinkers in economics series

Great thinkers in economics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lewis, W. Arthur (William Arthur), 1915-1991.

Lewis, W. Arthur.

Economists--Great Britain--Biography.

Economists.

Economics.

Great Britain.

Economics--Great Britain.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

x, 342 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Summary:

Great Thinkers in Economics is designed to illuminate the economics of some of the greatest historical and contemporary economists by exploring the interactions between their lives and work, and the events surrounding them. The books are brief and written in a style that makes them of interest not only to professional economists but also to students of economics and the interested lay person. Why are poor countries poor? How can they get out of the poverty trap? Sir Arthur Lewis (1915-91) was the first person to answer these questions in a systematic way. But he was much more than this; he was also the first Afro-Caribbean to be a professor at a British university, and the first black man to win the Nobel Prize for Economics. He had to fight against prejudice, in a way which for us, the best part of a century later, is hard to imagine. Lewis was also more than an academic economist. He believed 'that economics concerns life more than numbers', and wrote in a simple style, accessible to all. In Africa, the West Indies and Moss Side (Manchester) in the 1950s and early 1960s, side by side with his academic work, he was also working as an activist to try and achieve a fair deal for the poor. But those attempts ended in frustration, and he was astonished to be awarded the Nobel Prize, in 1979, when he thought he had been forgotten. Barbara Ingham and Paul Mosley's biography describes the man, and the social relationships, behind these astonishing achievements. Although Lewis liked to present himself as a rational individualist who worked his way up by himself, both the ladders he managed to climb, and the snakes he often slipped down, cannot be understood without considering Lewis' friendships, rivalries and the structures of the societies in which he attempted, sometimes happily and sometimes disastrously, to intervene. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Caribbean in Turmoil: Prologue to a Biography 1

1.1 Lewis's trajectory 1

1.2 Early life in the Caribbean, 1915-33 2

1.3 The approach of this book 12

2 'Marvellous intellectual feasts': The LSE Years, 1933-48 17

2.1 Introduction 17

2.2 The London School of Economics, 1933-45 19

2.3 From undergraduate student to assistant lecturer 24

2.4 Publications 31

2.5 Communicating with the public 36

2.6 The final years: the LSE post-war 39

3 The Colonial Office and the Genesis of Development Economics 43

3.1 Lewis's hinterland: 'anti-imperialists' and the Fabian Colonial Bureau 43

3.2 The Colonial Economic Advisory Committee, 1943-4 53

3.3 Lewis and development policy after the war 66

3.4 Lewis and the Colonial Development Corporation 75

4 'It takes hard work to be accepted in the academic world': Manchester University, 1948-57 85

4.1 Leaving the LSE 85

4.2 Manchester's academic community 90

4.3 Overseas assignments and explorations 99

4.4 Annus mirabilis, 1954 105

5 The Manchester Years: Lewis as Social and Political Activist 119

5.1 The South Hulme and Community House social centres, Moss Side 119

5.2 Political action and the Labour Party 137

6 Why Visiting Economists Fail: The Turning Point in Ghana, 1957-8 145

6.1 Introduction 145

6.2 Lewis in Ghana, 1952-8 146

6.3 Was Lewis an exemplar of 'why visiting economists fail'? 161

7 Disenchantment in the Caribbean, 1958-63 171

7.1 Introduction 171

7.2 Engagement with the West Indies, 1933-48 172

7.3 Consultant on Caribbean development, 1948-58 183

7.4 University College of the West Indies, 1960-3 186

7.5 The Principal as an economist 194

7.6 The Agony of the Eight 196

7.7 Postscript: The legacy of the Caribbean Development Bank, 1971-4 205

8 Princeton and Retirement, 1963-91 212

8.1 'The pleasantest country club in America' 212

8.2 Picking up the threads, 1964-7 214

8.3 Global economic history, 1967-78 224

8.4 The Nobel Prize, 1979 248

8.5 Winding down, 1980-4 251

8.6 Last years, 1984-91 258

9 The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge': Lewis's Legacy 261.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Hiram G. Haney Fund.

ISBN:

9780230553583

0230553583

OCLC:

852224746

Publisher Number:

99956364030