<incom> Hans Singer 1910-2006

[Soenke Zehle]

wikipedia entry also links to obituaries, Soenke

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Singer>

Sir Hans Wolfgang Singer (born 29 November 1910, died in Brighton, UK 26 
February 2006) was a development economist best known for the 
Singer-Prebisch thesis, which states that the terms of trade move 
against producers of primary products. He is one of the primary figures 
of heterodox economics.

Biography

A German Jew, Singer had intended to become a medical doctor before 
being inspired to study economics after attending a series of lectures 
by prominent economists Joseph Schumpeter and Arthur Spiethoff in Bonn. 
Singer fled the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933, arriving in the United 
Kingdom as a refugee. In 1933, Schumpeter convinced John Maynard Keynes 
of Cambridge University to accept Singer as one of his first PhD 
candidates, and Schumpeter received his doctorate in 1936. Under Keynes, 
he produced two papers in 1937 and 1940 studying unemployment. Keynes 
also helped secure Singer's speedy release after his former student was 
interned by the British government at the start of the Second World War. 
In 1938, Singer applied for British citizenship, listing as references 
Keynes, William Beveridge, William Temple and the vice-chancellor of 
Manchester University. His request was granted in 1946.

In 1947 he was one of the first three economists to join the new 
Economics Department of the United Nations, in which he remained for the 
next two decades. During his time at the United Nations, Singer was the 
Director of the Economic Division of the UN Industrial Development 
Organization (UNIDO), Director of the United Nations Research Institute 
for Social Development (UNRISD), and was closely involved in the 
creation of the Bretton Woods Framework and the post-World War II 
international financial institutions.

He published a 1950 empirical study examining the costs of international 
trade, drawing criticism from fellow economists Jacob Viner and 
Gottfried Haberler. The led to his famous co-credit with Raul Prebisch 
for the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis, the treatment of which is standard 
in university texts on economic development. However, the two economists 
did not collaborate, having come to similar conclusions separately. 
Singer's supporters are quick to point out that it appears that Singer 
wrote down the thesis before the more well-known Prebisch. The 
fundamental insight of the hypothesis is that, in a world system in 
which poorer nations specialize in primary products such as raw minerals 
and agricultural products that are then shipped to industrialized 
nations that, in turn, make advanced products to be sold poorer nations, 
all of the benefits of international trade will go to the wealthy nations.

As a result of this deduction, Singer was a passionate advocate for 
increased foreign aid, in a variety of forms, to the developing world to 
offset the disproportionate gain to developed nations through trade. He 
attempted to create a 'soft-loan' fund, which offers loans at interests 
rates below the free market, to be administered by the United Nations 
but was systematically blocked by the United States and the United 
Kingdom, who wished to retain control of money flowing out of the UN. He 
was thus considered "one of the wild men of the UN" by Eugene R. Black 
of the World Bank and American Senator Eugene McCarthy. His ideas were 
influential in the establishment of the Bank's International Development 
Association, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Food 
Programme.

Fellow economist Sir Alec Cairncross has said of Singer that "There are 
few of the developing countries that he has not visited and still fewer 
that he has not advised. He must have addressed a wider variety of 
academics and a wider variety of places about a wider variety of 
subjects than any other economist, living or dead." Singer, like 
Prebisch, was influential on Neo-Marxist development theorists such as 
Paul Baran and Andre Gunder Frank. However, he is not normally 
considered a Neo-Marxist himself, nor does he consider himself one.

In 1969, he left the UN to join the influential Institute of Development 
Studies at the University of Sussex in England. He produced about 30 
books under his name and nearly 300 other publications. Singer was 
knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994. In 2001 the UN World Food 
Program awarded him the Food for Life award in recognition of his 
contribution to the battle against world hunger. In November 2004, 
Singer was awarded the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the 
Development Studies Association.