He played a significant role in building the new University of Essex into a premier UK research centre for the social sciences in the 1960s.
And while emphasising "the virtues of the price system" noted that "its unaided operations were, in his own words, 'not beyond human wit to improve upon.'"
He completed high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and received his bachelor's degree in history from Cambridge University in 1943.
After graduation Archibald taught in Otago, New Zealand, but returned to the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1955 and was appointed to the staff.
He left LSE in 1964 to join the staff at the newly created University of Essex, where he received a professor's chair in 1967.