Against a backdrop of widespread household and small business strain from surging living costs across the Eastern Caribbean, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) is set to host its long-running annual Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, November 11. This year’s installment, the 28th iteration of the prestigious event, centers on the actionable, policy-focused theme “Competition, Regulation and the Cost-of-Living Problem,” and will be hosted at the Sir Cecil Jacobs Auditorium housed within ECCB’s St. Kitts and Nevis headquarters. Leading the keynote address is Professor Emeritus Andrew S. Downes, a preeminent University of the West Indies (UWI) economist whose decades of specialized expertise make him uniquely positioned to unpack the region’s cost-of-living challenges. Downes boasts an extensive academic and public policy track record, with over 100 peer-reviewed scholarly publications, senior UWI leadership stints including pro vice-chancellor for planning and development, and a prior tenure as chairman of the CARICOM Competition Commission, giving him deep on-the-ground insight into how competition policy can be structured for small island economies. His research portfolio spans economic development, labor economics, and organizational policy, and he shares a deeply personal academic connection to the lecture’s namesake: Saint Lucian economic icon Sir Arthur Lewis, who in 1979 made history as the first Black recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Lewis, a trailblazing figure who also served as UWI’s inaugural vice-chancellor and the United Kingdom’s first Black university professor during his tenure at the University of Manchester, directly mentored Downes in development planning at UWI’s Cave Hill Campus. Downes later pursued his doctorate in economics at the University of Manchester, where his doctoral research centered on Lewis’ pioneering frameworks for Caribbean industrial development, and he has since published authoritative biographies documenting the Nobel laureate’s transformative contributions to regional and global economic thought. Following Downes’ keynote, a dynamic panel discussion will expand on the lecture’s themes, pairing the veteran economist with Carissa Rodulfo, a specialized attorney and final-year competition law doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge. Rodulfo’s cutting-edge research focuses on tailoring competition legal frameworks to fit the unique structural needs of small island developing states, with a specific focus on Caribbean market contexts. Slated to kick off at 6 p.m. local time, the event will be accessible to audiences across the entire Eastern Caribbean region and beyond via a public livestream on the ECCB Connects YouTube channel, alongside coordinated broadcast coverage on selected local radio and television stations operating across all ECCB member nations. The annual lecture series has long served as a critical public forum to dissect pressing regional economic hurdles while paying sustained tribute to the unparalleled legacy of Sir Arthur Lewis, one of the Caribbean’s most globally influential intellectual and policy leaders.
ECCB to Host Lecture on Rising Cost of Living and Competition in the Caribbean
