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This lecture series, which is sponsored by the Eastern Caribbean Central bank, is held to honour the memory of Sir Arthur Lewis, Nobel Laureate in Economics who made a significant contribution to Caribbean regional integration. The lecture is the featured event at the opening ceremony of the Annual Conference with Commercial Banks. A wide cross-section of the population is invited to hear the views of the selected speaker.
Also at this event, presentations are made to winners of one of the Bank’s Community Outreach programmes, the Best Corporate Citizen Among Commercial Banks of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU). The Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Book Award, which is presented to a state college in the ECCU, is also featured during the event. The award is rotated annually among member countries on an alphabetical basis.
Sir William Arthur Lewis (1915-1991) was born in Saint Lucia of Antiguan parents who had migrated there 12 years earlier. At the age of 17 he won the Saint Lucia Island Scholarship. He attended the London School of Economics (LSE) where he studied Business Administration.
Sir Arthur graduated with first class honours in 1937, and continued his studies obtaining a PhD Degree in Industrial Economics. He subsequently taught at the LSE and at the University of Manchester, where he was made full professor in 1948, at the age of 33. Sir Arthur also taught at Princeton University and was made an Emeritus Professor of Political Economy.
He was Principal of the University College of the West Indies and in 1962 became the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies. He was knighted in 1963. In 1970 Sir Arthur became the first President of the Caribbean Development Bank. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1979.
Among his major works are: “The Industrialisation of the British West Indies”; “Labour in the West Indies”; “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour”; “The Theory of Economic Growth” and “The Agony of the Eight”.
Today his image is on the hundred dollar note of the EC currency as a deserving symbol of his remarkable contribution to regional integration and sovereignty.
View Archived Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Lectures from 1996 to 2019
