Remarks of the Cariforum Ministerial spokesperson on the EPA at the launch of the third phase of negotiations for the EU-CARIFORUM EPA, St. Lucia, September 30, 2005

‘The Region’s position is that neither trade nor market access by themselves are sufficient to promote development. Countries suffering from capacity constraints and institutional inadequacies will not be able to make the best use of market access, even under preferential terms. It is for this reason that CARIFORUM has been insisting on the need for an EPA to address the Region’s development needs’….

Click here for text of Dame Billie Miller’s remarks

Abstract. Keynote address on the occasion of the 2005 SALISES Conference marking the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Sir Arthur Lewis’s Theory of Economic Growth. Summarises and comments on Lewis’s work on industrial economics, the history of the world economy, development economcs and the ‘dual economy’ model, the problem of the terms of trade, the necessity for an agicultural revolution, the case of industrialization, the role of education and the imperative of regional integration. Concludes that Lewis’s work as an Applied Economist was motivated by his being an ‘anti-imperalist, a nationalist, a regionalist and a social democrat’; and that ‘his work calls us to put professional training at the service of community’ .

(Social and Economic Studies, 54, 3; September 2005; 10-25.)

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This paper examines differences and similarities in the approach to economic development of the Plantation School of Caribbean economists and of W.A. Lewis by locating them within their respective theoretical frameworks. By tracing the evolution of Lewis’s thinking in three stages from Caribbean industrialisation to the dual economy and then to trade and development, it identified a change in emphasis in Lewis’s later work that brought him closer to ‘dependency’ explanations of underdevelopment, of which the Plantation School was an expression. It draws attention Lewis’s own perspective on the dependency thesis and the related thesis that imperialism is the cause underdevelopment. The paper goes on to review the Plantation School’s critiques of Lewis’s industrialisation model for the Caribbean and its proposals for an alternative theoretical approach in the form of models of Plantation Economy, and compares this to Lewis’s analytical framework to show the differences and similarities. The final section discusses the contemporary relevance of the comparison of the approaches of Lewis and the Plantation School.

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