Part I: the Early Years (1910–47)
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Notes Part I: The Early Years (1910–47) 1. When searching for clues in Hans Singer’s formative years for early influences that were to fashion his outlook on life and determine his future work, we are fortunate to have a number of autobiographical accounts, which leaves little to surmise or conjecture (Singer, 1976a; 1984c; 1986g; 1992d; Arestis and Sawyer, 1992; Esslinger, 1997). 2. Original version published in 1912; revised edition in1926. Shortened and revised edition translated into English by Redvers Opie in 1934. For an appreciation of the life and work of Schumpeter, see Marz, 1991; Swedberg, 1991; and Stolper, 1994; 3. Wolfgang Stolper, Schumpeter’s biographer, described perhaps the most important messages of Schumpeter’s Theory of Economic Development as ‘History matters. Theory matters. Evolution, not equilibrium, is the central phenomenon. The future is in principle not foreseeable. Theoretical expla- nations are rational but not deterministic. Extrapolation of the past to the future may work for a time but may then suddenly become misleading’ (Stolper, in Sapsford and Chen, 1998a, p. 521). 4. It has also helped many friends and colleagues who have sent their drafts to Singer for comment and found that nothing escaped his attention, includ- ing omitted punctuation marks and spelling mistakes. 5. Singer acknowledged that Loesch’s work provided the main inspiration for one of his earliest papers, which he wrote with Abba Lerner in 1937 (Lerner and Singer, 1937a). A year earlier, he had also written a paper on the possibil- ity of a mathematical generalization of the relative numbers of towns and villages of different size first discovered by Auerbach in 1913, which he ‘redis- covered’ using more extensive data (Singer, 1936a). Colin Clark was struck by the predominance of German names in the study of the economics of loca- tion. He commented that ‘The intellectual challenge of attempting to system- atize such intractable material must have a particular appeal to the German mind’ (Clark, 1937, p. 279). Clark recognized that the graphical exploration and analysis of town size was very difficult unless the technique of cumulating data and plotting them on double logarithmic diagrams was used. This tech- nique was analogous to the Pareto diagram for analyzing the distribution of income which, like the distribution of towns, was also very highly skewed. He noted that Singer first discovered this in 1936 (Clark, ibid, p. 317). 6. Wolfgang Stolper came across Singer’s letters to Schumpeter when doing his research on Schumpeter’s biography and sent copies to Singer. The first letter sent from Wuppertal-Elberfeld requesting Schumpeter’s help was dated 24 October 1933. The second letter, acknowledging Schumpeter’s help with ‘immense gratitude’, was sent from Istanbul and was dated 2 January 1934 ( Singer papers, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom). 284 Notes 285 7. Her obituary by Margaretta Jolly appeared in The Guardian on 13 March 2001. 8. Singer graphically described his impressions of Cambridge in Singer (1997e). A vivid description of Cambridge and Keynes during the time that Alec Cairncross and Singer were postgraduate students is also given in Cairncross’ autobiography (Cairncross, 1998, pp. 41–52). 9. I am grateful to Dr Mark Nicholls, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Cambridge University Library for this information. Copies of Rao’s and Singer’s dissertations (Nos PhD 796 and PhD 803) are deposited in the Cambridge University Library and brief summaries of their contents are included in Cambridge Dissertations, 1936–37, pp. 68–70. Rao’s thesis was published by Macmillan in 1940 under the same title as his PhD dissertation (Personal communication, 18 June 1996). 10. The study by Paul Lazarsfeld and Marie Jahoda on Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (‘The Unemployed of Marienthal’), published in 1933, argued that people have a fundamental need to work for economic, social and personal reasons. It showed the damaging psychological consequences of unemployment and was taken into account in the work that Singer and his colleagues were to undertake in the Pilgrim Trust enquiry. 11. Singer further elaborated on these issues in two articles in the Review of Economic Studies (Singer, 1938j; 1938k). 12. Letter to Alec Cairncross from Hans Singer dated 18 June 1940. 13. Letter to Alec Cairncross from Hans Singer dated 3 June 1940. 14. Reference to the ‘University of Madagascar’ alluded to one of Hitler’s ‘solu- tions to the Jewish problem’, which was to resettle Jews on the island of Madagascar. Letter to Alec Cairncross from Hans Singer dated 1 June 1942. 15. David Owen was to play an important role in Singer’s career at the United Nations. Apart from being the first assistant secretary-general and head of the UN Department of Economic Affairs, he was the first and only chair- man of the UN Technical Assistance Board until it was merged with the UN Special Fund to form the UNDP in 1965, of which he was co-administrator with Paul Hoffman until his retirement in 1969. A pioneer of the United Nations from its very beginning, he never lost his sense of ‘practical ideal- ism’ during his 24 years at the UN. Part II: Service in the United Nations (1947–69) 1. I am particularly indebted to John and Richard Toye for their work on the origins of the Prebisch–Singer thesis (Toye and Toye, forthcoming) and to David Sapsford and John-ren Chen for their work in reviewing the consid- erable number of studies concerning the Prebisch–Singer thesis (Sapsford and Chen, 1998b). 2. Singer saw an analogy here with the Todaro model in which unemployment brings into equilibrium the urban wage rate and the rural living standard (Todaro, 1969). In Singer’s model, unemployment brought into equilibrium the available technology and factor endowment of developing countries. 3. David Sapsford worked in the IMF’s Research Department in 1984 on an assignment to investigate the likely movements in the barter terms of trade 286 Notes with a view to making an input into the debate of the time as to whether the Fund might devote increased resources to its Compensatory Financing Fund Facility. His 1985 paper in The Economic Journal was a shortened version of the internal document he produced, which showed that ‘once the then proper statistical procedures were applied to the data, the evidence in support of the P-S thesis shined through loud and clear. The avalanche of statistical/econometric studies … thus began’ (Personal communication, 19 September 2000). 4. Methods of Financing of Economic Development in Under-Developed Countries (1952) (Series RAG-2/170, box 6, UN Archives and Records Centre, New York). 5. The members of the expert group were: Alberto Baltra Cortez, D. G. Cadgil, George Hakim, W. Arthur Lewis and Theodore W. Schultz. 6. The nine members were: S. Amjad Ali (Pakistan), Ambassador and President of ECOSOC during 1952; Fernand Baudhuin (Belgium), Professor of Economics, Catholic University, Louvain; C. V. Bramsnaes (Denmark), member of the Board of Directors and former Governor of the National Bank; Miguel Cuaderno (Philippines), Governor, Central Bank; Sir Cyril Jones (United Kingdom), Director, Mercantile Bank of India, Ltd., London and former Finance Secretary of the Government of India; Leo Mates (Yugoslavia), Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent representative of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia to the United Nations; Hernan Santa Cruz (Chile), President of ECOSOC during 1950 and 1951 and former Permanent representative of Chile to the United Nations; Eduardo Suarez (Mexico), member of the Board of Directors of the Nacional Financiera S. A. and the Bank of Mexico and former Secretary of Finance; and Wayne C. Taylor (United States), former President of the Export-Import Bank and former Under-Secretary of Commerce. Eduardo Suarez acted as chairman of the group. 7. A copy of the report of the committee of nine is available in the UN Archives and Records Centre in New York, series RAG-/170, box 7. 8. Letter to H. W. Singer from Richard H. Demuth, Director, Technical Assistance and Liaison, IBRD, 9 June 1952 (Series RAG-2/170, box 7, UN Archives and Records Centre, New York). 9. Letter from H. W. Singer to H. J. Dernburg, Balance of Payments Division, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2 December 1952 (Series RAG-2/170, box 7, UN Archives and Records Centre, New York). 10. Memorandum from H. E. Caustin, Acting Director, Division of Economic Stability and Development to Roy Blough, Principal Director, Department of Economic Affairs, 14 December 1953 (Series RAG-2/170, box 16, UN Archives and Records centre, New York). 11. The members of the group were: John Abbink (United States), foreign trade consultant; A. Nazmy Abdel Hamid (Egypt), sub-governor of the National Bank; B. K. Madan (India), economic adviser to the Reserve Bank, former executive director of the IMF, and Alternate executive director of the IBRD; Sir Francis Mudie (United Kingdom), former head of the British Economic mission to Yugoslavia; Jacques Oudiette (France), director of the Banque Nationale pour le Commerce et l’Industrie, Paris; Nenad Popovic (Yugoslavia), vice-governor of the National Bank, former executive director Notes 287 of the IMF, and former alternate executive director of the IBRD; Jorge Schneider (Chile), director of the New York office of the Corporacion de Fomento de la Produccion de Chile, and former executive director of the IBRD; and Jan Tinbergen (the Netherlands), professor of economics, Netherlands School of Economics and director of the Central Planning Bureau, The Hague. 12. SUNFED – A Policy Memorandum by H. W. Singer, 10 December 1954 (Series RAG-2/170, box 7, UN Archives and Records Centre, New York). 13. Singer had in mind the principles for the disposal of agricultural surpluses which FAO had recently recommended in Rome and the establishment of a permanent Consultative Subcommittee on Surplus Disposal (CSD) in Washington, DC to monitor their application (FAO, 1954).