Hans Wolfgang Singer (economist)

Sir Hans Wolfgang Singer (born November 29, 1910 in Elberfeld (today in Wuppertal ); died February 26, 2006 in Brighton , Great Britain ) was an internationally recognized economist from Germany .

Life

After graduating from high school in Elberfeld, Hans Singer first studied medicine at the University of Bonn , but switched to economics in the second semester . After graduating in 1932, he became Arthur Spiethoff's assistant . He was also shaped by the work of Joseph A. Schumpeter . Singer had to emigrate in 1933 at the age of 22. After fleeing the Nazi regime and Singer's emigration to Turkey, Schumpeter established contact with John Maynard Keynes ; Then Singer completed his doctoral studies at King's College in Cambridge and in 1936 with the work material for the Study of Urban Ground Rent doctorate . He was initially "Assistant Lecturer in Economics" at the University of Manchester and in 1945 moved to the British Ministry of Urban Planning.

From 1946 Singer taught at the University of Glasgow . From 1947 he worked for the United Nations for more than two decades , initially as Head of Development in the UN Secretariat, later entrusted with the establishment of the African Development Bank, the World Food Program, the UN Special Fund for Economic Development and at the facility of the World Employment Program of the International Labor Organization (ILO). The so-called Prebisch-Singer thesis is based on the work he wrote for the UN “Postwar Price Relations in Trade between Underdeveloped and Industrialized Countries” (1949) and a work published by Raúl Prebisch in the same year . This study presents research results on the development of the terms of trade between industrialized and developing countries and demonstrates the deterioration of the trade balances for the countries of the periphery .

From 1947 to 1969, Singer was also a visiting professor at New York's The New School for Social Research . From 1969 he worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in Brighton, from 1975 full professor for economics. In 1985 he retired . In the 1960s he was also visiting professor at the City University of New York and at Williams College in Williamstown , Massachusetts .

In 1994 he was ennobled by the British Queen Elizabeth II as a Knight Bachelor ("Sir"). He received honorary doctorates for his work from the University of Santa Fé (1988), the University of Sussex (1990), the Technical University of Lisbon and the University of Glasgow (both 1994), the University of Innsbruck (1998) and the University of Kent (1999 ) and the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg .

To commemorate and honor Sir Hans Singer, the German Development Institute (DIE) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) initiated the "Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development", which is held every year alternately in Bonn and Brighton. The first Memorial Lecture was given in 2009 by development economist Paul Collier from the University of Oxford in Bonn, followed by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in 2010 and Stephen Chan from the school of Oriental and African Studies from the University of London in 2011.

Singer had avoided Germany after the Second World War , but in the 1980s accepted an invitation from the Department of Economics at Wuppertal University to come to his hometown to give lectures to students, among other things.

Fonts

• The Distribution of Gains between Investing and Borrowing Countries. In: American Economic Review 40 (1950), 473-485
• The Mechanics of Economic Development. A quantitative model approach. In: The Indian Economic Review 1 (1952/53), 1-18
• International Development. Growth and Change , New York a. a. 1964
• Employment, Incomes and Equality. A Strategy for Increasing Productive Employment in Kenya , Geneva 1972 with Richard Jolly
• The Strategy of International Development , London 1975
• Food Aid: Distinctive Effects and their Policy Implications. In: Economic Development and Cultural Change 25 (1977), 205-237 with Paul J. Isenman
• Thirty Years of Changing Thought on Development Problems. In: Misra, Rameshwar Prasad / Honjo, Masahiko (eds.): Changing Perceptions of Development Problems, Nagoya 1981, 69-76
• The Terms of Trade Controversy and the Evolution of Soft Financing. Early Years at the UN. In: Meier, Gerald M. / Seers, Dudley (eds.): Pioneers in Development, New York et al. 1984, 275–303
• Terms of Trade and Economic Development. In: Eatwell, John et al. (Ed.): The New Palgrave. A Dictionary of Economics. Vol. 4, London, Basingstoke 1987, 323-328.
• Food Aid: Pros and Cons. In: Intereconomics 23 (1988), 79-83
• Manufactured Exports of Developing Countries and their Terms of Trade since 1965. In: World Development 19 (1991), 333-340 with Prabirjit Sarkar
• Economic Progress and Prospects in the Third World. Lessons of Development Experience Since 1945 , Aldershot 1993 with Sumit Roy
• The Foreign Aid Business , Cheltenham 1996 with Kunibert Raffer
• The Influence of Schumpeter and Keynes on the Development of a Development Economist. In: Hagemann, Harald (ed.): On German-speaking economic emigration after 1933, Marburg 1997, 127–150
• Growth, Development and Trade. Selected essays of Hans W. Singer , Cheltenham u. a. 1998
• The Economic North-South Divide. Six Decades of Unequal Development , Cheltenham 2001 with Kunibert Raffer

literature

• Cairncross, Alec / Puri, Mohinder (Eds.): Employment, Income Distribution and Development Strategy. Problems of the Developing Countries
• Essays in Honor of HW Singer , London, Basingstoke 1976
• Clay, Edward / Shaw, John (Eds.): Poverty, Development and Food . Essays in Honor of HW Singer on his 75th Birthday, London, Basingstoke 1987
• Shaw, John: Sir Hans Singer: The Life and Work of a Development Economist , London 2002
• Ulrich Eßlinger: Singer, Hans Wolfgang. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (ed.): Biographical handbook of German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 2: Leichter branch. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 650-656.
• Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 704

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Wolfgang Singer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Günter Schiller: A world economist from Elberfeld. In: Wuppertal Unimagazin No. 29. 2004, archived from the original on January 8, 2008 ; Retrieved December 15, 2012 . 
• Hans Wolfgang Singer

Individual evidence

1. ↑ World economist from Elberfeld: Sir Hans Singer died. University of Wuppertal, March 28, 2006, archived from the original on January 29, 2008 ; Retrieved December 14, 2012 .