News 2022-2023

32 Lincoln’s Inn Fields renamed to Sir Arthur Lewis (SAL) building

Thurday 24 March 2023 marked a moment that will be remembered by the London School of Economics and Political Science particularly the Department of Economics.

What was once 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields is now the Sir Arthur Lewis Building after the Nobel Prize laureate and LSE alumnus who studied, researched and taught at LSE.

Sir Arthur Lewis' daughter Elizabeth, her husband Steven as well as his grand-daughter Samantha and her fiance Khari, all travelled from the United-States of America to mark the occasion.

Also present was the High Commissioner for St Lucia, family friends, LSE President and Vice Chancellor, Baroness Minouche Shafik, faculty members at the School and Staff working in the building.

The building is home to the Department of Economics, the Centre for Economic Performance, the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, the Centre for Macroeconomics, and the International Growth Centre.

St Lucia-born William Arthur Lewis, after whom the building is named, began his Bachelor of Commerce degree at LSE in 1933, after winning a government scholarship to study in Britain. He gained a First-Class degree in 1937 and subsequently obtained a scholarship to continue his studies at our School, earning his PhD in Industrial Economics.

While at LSE, he studied under John Hicks, Arnold Plant, Lionel Robbins and Friedrich Hayek. He was a member of staff from 1938 to 1948 and became a School Reader in Colonial Economics in 1947. Described as "one of our best teachers" he was LSE’s first Black academic and the UK’s first Black professor.

Sir Arthur Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1979 for "pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries".

March 2023

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management has gone in this fifteenth edition to Timothy J. Besley (London School of Economics), Torsten Persson (Institute of International Economic Studies, Stockholm University) and Guido Tabellini (Bocconi University,) for "illuminating the connections between the economic and political worlds" and "transforming the field of political economy," in the words of the committee’s citation. The three awardees, together with the late Alberto Alesina (Harvard University), have employed both theoretical and empirical tools to examine "how political institutions and processes shape economic policies and outcomes on one hand, and how economic factors shape political institutions on the other," contributing decisively to shape the field of modern political economy.

Read more here.

Watch here.

We are very sorry to share that Weihan Ding passed away on 20 January at the young age of 31.

Weihan spent 7 years at the LSE, earning his MSc, MRes, and PhD, all in the Department of Economics, before becoming a lecturer at the University of Exeter Business School.

He was diagnosed with Leukemia in Summer 2022 and sadly passed away after a valiant battle with the disease.

Weihan is survived by his four-year-old son Alfie and his wife Leyi. He will be sorely missed and remembered as a perfect son, a loving father, a great husband, an accomplished academic, an outstanding lecturer, and an amazing friend. He enriched the lives of all his family, friends, colleagues, and students with his ever-positive outlook and his knowledgeable, warm, friendly, and helpful ways.

We are in deep mourning over the loss of a widely respected and popular member of our community. All memories of him will be greatly treasured.

Please share your thoughts and memories through the link here: Tribute to Weihan

Eric Edwin Lampard, Professor of Economic History and Historical Demography Emeritus at Stony Brook University, New York, celebrated his 100th birthday, along with former colleagues, students, relatives, and friends in Look Park, Northampton, Massachusetts, U.S.A. on September 26 2022.

Lampard attended the London School of Economics in 1941-42 at Grove Lodge, Peterhouse, Cambridge to where it had been evacuated owing to the war. During the war Lampard served in the Home Guard, Cambridge University Senior Training Corps, and the Royal Marines in brigade artillery units and combined operations. He served in the Atlantic, European, and Southeast Asian theatres, ending his combat duties at Singapore Naval Base, Seletar, in 1945-46. Returning to LSE in September 1946, he was elected student secretary of Passfield House, Cartwright Gardens, Holborn, the school’s first experience with dormitory life. Among Lampard’s distinguished teachers at LSE either before and/or after his war service were R.H. Tawney, H.J. Laski, Herman Finer, W.I. Jennings, F.J. Fisher, Lionel Robbins, and Nicholas Kaldor.

In August 1948 Lampard was awarded the BSe (Econ) degree (2 upper div.) While at LSE during and after the war, Lampard was a member of the LSE Hockey Club. Meanwhile, he had obtained a position as instructor in history at Cornell College, Iowa, in the USA. He went on to study at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where in 1954 he completed a Ph.D. in economic history and land economics with his dissertation on "The Rise of the Dairy Industry: A Study in Agricultural Change, 1820-1920." This study was awarded the David Clark Everest Prize in Economic History and was published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin Press in 1963. Lampard was also awarded a post-Doctoral Fellowship in Economic History at the University of Pennsylvania in 1954-55 where he studied inter alia with Simon Kuznets and Dorothy Thomas, publishing "The History of Cities in the Economically-Advanced Areas," Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol 3 (1955), pp. 81-156 (later reprinted in several other publications.) In 1957 he published Industrial Revolution: Interpretations and Perspectives (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association 1957) pp.40. In Cities and Markets: Studies in the Organization of Human Space Presented to Eric E. Lampard, Rondo Cameron and Leo F. Schnore eds. University Press of America, Lanham, Md, New York, and Oxford, 1997) pp.372, his published bibliography then listed 43 publications. Lampard also received appointments from such research enterprises as Resources for the Future, the Brookings Institution, and the National Research Council. During 1968-73 he served as American Review Correspondent for The Economic History Review (UK) and directed the Graduate Program in Economic History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison to which he had returned in 1959-70.

In the course of his long academic career Lampard also taught at City College of New York, Columbia Univ., Smith College, and the University of Wisconsin and was a visiting professor at Stanford, Harvard, and Yale Universities. He also contributed "Structural Changes: Introductory Essay" to Inventing Times Square, William R. Taylor ed., pp. 15-35, 372-75. (New York: Russel Sage Foundation 1991), republished by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1996, as a paperback.

Professor Eric Lampard married Marie Vera Turbow, a children’s art teacher and Russian art history scholar, on September 22nd, 1951, in New York City. They enjoyed 69 years together before her death in 2020. They had one daughter, Sophie Lampard Dennis, and three grandchildren.

Among the many messages received on his centennial birthday was a large colour photograph of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II sending Lampard her "congratulations and best wishes" by Royal Mail from Buckingham Palace, 05.09.22.

December 2022

A successful Environment Week: 19-23 September 2022.

The Economics of Environment and Energy Programme (EEE), International Growth Centre (IGC) and Programme on Innovation and Diffusion (POID) within the LSE Economics Department worked with partners at the school and across the world to use Environment Week to encourage economists from all fields of economics to work on environmental issues and to connect this work to policy change.

During LSE Environment Week, the speakers highlighted how this work is urgently needed given rising concerns over climate change, pollution and environmental degradation. Along with the major challenge of achieving a better balance between human activity and the natural environment, without sacrificing economic growth.

"It was a fantastic event and great to see more environmental work happening in the department," said Robin Burgess, Professor of Economics, Co-Founder and Director of the International Growth Centre and Director of the Economics of Environment and Energy Research Programme at the LSE.

Click here to watch the live footage on YouTube

Find the programme here.

October 2022