Sir Hans Singer.

HANS SINGER, who died on 26 February 2006 at the age of 95, was one of the best-known and most-respected pioneering analysts of the challenges facing developing countries. His professional career spanned over seven decades and his work was recognized in honorary doctorates and a knighthood in 1994 "for services to economic issues".

He was included as one of the ten "pioneers in development" in a book published by the World Bank in 1984. He was awarded the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Award for Research and Education in 1994/1995, the UN World Food Programme Food for Life Award in 2001, and a lifetime achievement award in 2004 by the United Kingdom's Development Studies Association. Six festschriften were written in his honour, which show the depth and breadth of his influence in development studies, and the esteem and affection in which he was held. He produced 450 publications, in books, reports and articles, which are catalogued in his biography*

Singer was born in 1910 into a strongly assimilated, largely secular, middle-class Jewish family, in what is now Wuppertal in the German Rhineland. The "twists of fate" that led to him becoming a world famous development economist began in 1929. He entered Bonn University with the intention of studying medicine-his father was a doctor-but switched to economics after attending a lecture by the famous economist of the Austrian school, Joseph Schumpeter, and came under his spell and that of his masterpiece, The Theory of Economic Development (1912). Singer's promising academic career-in Germany was cut short when Hitler came to power and he had to flee to England.

After receiving a doctorate in economics from Cambridge in 1936, Singer's first employment after university was a major two-year study of long-term unemployment in the depressed areas of Britain. As a member of a small team, he lived with the poor during the study and produced a seminal report, Men Without Work (1938). He continued to write, including a series of twelve articles on the German war economy for The Economic Journal (1940-1944), at the request of John Maynard Keynes, who was co-editor of the journal.

In 1947, another twist of fate was to redirect Singer's career, this time with an international dimension. David Owen, who had worked with Singer on the Pilgrim Trust study, was appointed as the first head of the UN Department of Economic Affairs. Owen sought Singer's services to strengthen his new department. During his time at the United Nations, Singer was involved in many pioneering studies and projects and travelled extensively throughout the developing world. He quickly made his mark with a landmark study on the terms of trade of developing countries, for which he became perhaps most known. Contrary to the mainstream economists' view of the time, he showed that the terms of trade for countries exporting primary commodities had been declining for many years. He meant his work to be less of a projection and more of a policy guide in which he advised developing countries to diversify out of primary exports. Singer's thesis remains one of the few in economics to have stood the test of time.

Singer played an active, often key, role in the ten-year (1949-1959) saga to establish a Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development, which led to the creation of the International Development Association, the soft-lending window of the World Bank; the establishment of a UN special fund and a UN expanded programme of technical assistance, which were amalgamated to form the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1965; the changing focus of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) from an emergency fund to a development agency for children; the birth of the UN World Food Programme (WFP); the setting up of the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO); the creation of the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD); and the early work of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the foundation of the African Development Bank. At the end of more than two decades at the United Nations, David Owen said: "Hans is that rare being, an economist of world repute, a departmental draftsman of prodigious productivity, an inexhaustible fountain of stimulating ideas for almost all occasions ... and a living proof that an international civil servant can play a creative role in the great task of changing the policies of nations."

Singer remained at the United Nations for 22 years and on his retirement at the age of 59, he was appointed professorial fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and professor of economics at the University of Sussex. There began his third career as researcher, teacher, consultant to Governments, aid agencies and NGOs, conference lecturer, reviewer and correspondent to newspapers, journals and academics around the world. He co-authored and co-edited at least 30 books and nearly 300 other publications on a wide range of subjects relating to economic development and the problems of developing countries. At the same time, he remained highly critical of the Bretton Woods institutions, wrote with passion on UN reform and revitalization, and argued for the effective use of aid and the resolution of the debt problem and debt servicing. His wide range of assignments enabled him to see, at first hand, the realities of developing countries and discuss with their leaders and planners their developmental problems and aspirations. This practical experience allowed him to set his own conceptual and theoretical intellectual framework against the background of concrete reality. He was also able to see the national and international political dimensions and environment within which development issues were discussed and resolved.

Finally, out of this milieu came a mixture of theorist and pragmatist. Singer was an economic activist, who sought solutions to the problems of the Third World. He was not afraid to leave the high ground of development economic theory and to mix metaphors, get his hands dirty and his feet wet in the arena of public policy and action. His whole bent was to put good theory into sound and effective policies and instruments. Singer said: "One tried to look at the world from the viewpoint of the underdog--of the recipient, the victim. You may get insights into the world that are not open to people who look at the world from the top down."

A number of common themes permeated Singer's enormous output that may be synthesized as his perspective on development. For him, development is not merely about economic growth-it is growth accompanied by structural, social and economic change, in qualitative and quantitative terms. The starting point should be people, not money and wealth. Sustained and equitable development depended not on the creation of wealth but on the capacity of people to create wealth. Hence, his insistence on the importance of the human factor in economic development and following from that on education and training, science and appropriate technology, employment, income distribution and the conquest of poverty, the well-being of children, and planning and sound institutions--all viewed in an international context in which trade and aid are conducted with distributive justice and efficiency so that all countries, developing and developed, may flourish and converge.

Singer's commitment to the cause of a more equitable international order remained unquenched, and his willingness to nurture this ideal by force of argument and by personal example continues to inspire our profoundest respect, admiration and gratitude. Present and future development economists would do well to emulate his example.

NOTE

* Shaw, D. John. Sir Hans Singer. The Life and Work of a Development Economist. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; New Delhi: BRPC (India) Ltd, 2004.

John Shaw served with the World Food Programme for over thirty years, latterly as an economic adviser and chief of Policy Affairs Service, and is author of The UN World Food Programme and the Development of Food Aid. He has also served as a consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Bank and the Commonwealth Secretariat. Mr. Shaw knew and worked with Hans Singer for over forty years and wrote his biography.

Sir Hans Singer [was] a true pioneer and titan in the world of development economics. In a career spanning seven decades, [he] made an immeasurable contribution to post-war development strategies, to the fight against poverty and to our understanding of the impact of global trade dynamics on the developing world. We in the United Nations family owe him a particular debt of gratitude for his role in shaping our work, from its earliest years onwards. The enduring benefit of his guiding hand can be felt to this day in several UN entities, from the Secretariat to the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Food Programme. Sir Hans leaves the most precious legacy possible--a wealth of insights that will further the cause of development for many years to come, and the hope that he gave to the people he worked to help.

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Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the memorial service for Sir Hans Singer

University of Sussex, United Kingdom, 8 March 2006