On W. Arthur Lewis' Contributions to Economics

A major concern of economics in our time has been the problem of economic development, the achieving of a sustained increase in per capita incomes of the millions of people living in the so-called Third World. The urgency of this issue has led economists in the past three decades to return to the inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations that they had abandoned during the previous century for the investigation of the allocation of given resources and the stabilization of employment and income. Among the many distinguished economists who have contributed notably to this recently revived field the pre-eminent figure is Professor W. Arthur Lewis of Princeton University. The purpose of the present paper is to describe and evaluate the nature and significance of his contributions.