W. Arthur Lewis

W. Arthur Lewis (1915–1991) was a Saint Lucian economist who made significant contributions to development economics. Educated at the London School of Economics, he became a professor at the University of Manchester in 1948 and later served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies from 1959 to 1963. Lewis was among the first Black scholars to be appointed a full professor at a British university.
His most influential work, "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour" (1954), proposed a dual-sector model for developing economies. This model posits that developing nations often have a large, low-productivity subsistence agricultural sector with surplus labor, from which workers can be transferred to a high-productivity industrial sector. This transfer allows for industrial expansion without increasing real wages in the modern sector until the agricultural surplus labor is fully absorbed. This framework explained how rapid industrialization could occur, driven by profits reinvested by capitalists in the modern sector.
Lewis's model was highly influential in the 1950s and 1960s, providing a theoretical justification for industrialization strategies adopted by many newly independent nations, particularly in Asia and Africa. He was an economic advisor to various governments, including Ghana (1957) and Nigeria, and worked with several international organizations. His analysis emphasized the importance of capital accumulation and entrepreneurship in driving economic transformation, moving beyond a sole focus on natural resources.
For his pioneering research into economic development with particular regard to the problems of developing countries, he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1979 with Theodore Schultz. Lewis's insights into the dynamics of labor migration and the structural transformation of economies remain relevant in contemporary discussions about global development.