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Hans Singer's Legacy: the Problem of Commodity Exporters Revisited Prof Hans Singer’s legacy: The problem of commodity exporters revisited Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development 2009 Conference proceedings 18 May 2009 Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in cooperation with with support from Discussion Paper / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik ISSN 1860-0441 Hans Singer’s legacy: the problem of commodity exporters revisited : Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development 2009 ; conference proceedings / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik. In cooperation with Institute of Development Studies. With support from Universität Bonn. – Bonn : DIE, 2009 (Discussion Paper / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik ; 15/2009) ISBN 978-3-88985-465-0 Prof. Dr. Paul Collier, CBE, Director, Centre for the Study of African Economies at University of Oxford Dr. Thomas Fues, Head of Training-Department, German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Prof. Sir Richard Jolly, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, UK Prof. Dr. Dirk Messner, Director, German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungs- politik (DIE) Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Sir Hans W. Singer © Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik gGmbH Tulpenfeld 6, 53113 Bonn ℡ +49 (0)228 94927-0 +49 (0)228 94927-130 E-Mail: [email protected] http://www.die-gdi.de Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Sir Hans Wolfgang Singer (born 29 November 1910 in Wuppertal; deceased 26 February 2006 in Brighton), a renowned international economist and one of the most influential development practitioner of the 20th century has studied in Bonn and graduated from the Economics Department of the University of Bonn in 1932. Being Jewish, he fled the Nazi terror in 1933 and settled in the UK. After World War II, in 1947, he became an influential development scholar with the United Nations (UN) for two decades. During his time at the UN Hans Singer was a significant driver of establishing important organizations like UNICEF, UNDP and the World Food Programme. The main scientific finding of Hans Singer is the Singer- Prebisch Thesis, which states that the terms of trade for commodity exporting developing countries tend to deteriorate over time. From 1969 until his death he joined the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex. In commemoration and in honour of Sir Hans Singer the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) with support from the Institute for Political Science and Sociology of the University of Bonn established the “Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development” which took place for the first time on 18 May 2009. It is foreseen that the Memorial Lecture will alternate between Bonn and Brighton on an annual basis. The “Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development 2009” has received generous support from: Contents The Hans Singer Memorial Lecture: Bonn to honour one of the 20th century’s outstanding development researchers Dr. Thomas Fues 1 Hans Singer – A pioneer of development research Prof. Dr. Dirk Messner 3 Hans Singer – the gentle giant Prof. Sir Richard Jolly 7 Hans Singer's Legacy: The problem of commodity exporters revisited Prof. Dr. Paul Collier 9 Revitalizing the United Nations: Five proposals Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Prof. Dr. Sir Hans W. Singer 17 (Originally published in October 1995) The German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 25 List of Publications 2009 26 Hans Singer Memorial Lecture 2009 The Hans Singer Memorial Lecture: Bonn to honour one of the 20th century’s outstanding development researchers1 Dr. Thomas Fues On 18 May 2009 the first “Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development” took place in Bonn. The Memorial Lecture, a joint initiative of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex) with support from the Institute for Political Science and Sociology of the University of Bonn was created to honour one of the twentieth century’s most influential European development researchers, whose academic career began at the University of Bonn. It was in Bonn that he was to acquire his first academic degree, in economics, in 1931. He had already gained the support of Joseph Schumpeter, at that time a professor of political economics in Bonn, for his planned doctoral studies. However, Schumpeter, who was later to achieve eminence in his field, soon left Bonn for a position at Harvard University. Singer was in the midst of writing a new dissertation when he was forced to flee the National Socialist terror regime because of his Jewish background. In 1934 he arrived, by a roundabout way, in the UK, where he was soon to become a member of the group of Cambridge scholars around John Maynard Keynes. Since World War II, Sir Hans Singer – he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1994 – shaped, in key ways, both the academic debate on the countries of the South and the practice of development policy. From 1947 to 1969, Hans Singer held a number of prominent posts in the United Nations’ development sector. From 1969 to 2006, the year of his death, he was a member of the teaching and research staff of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton. Hans Singer devoted the better part of his life to efforts to give the economic sciences a new, emphatically moral orientation geared to practical applications and advisory work. That may be the reason why he has, until today, received relatively little recognition in his own discipline, that is, outside the field of development studies. It was at the United Nations that Hans Singer developed his widely acclaimed theory on the long-term deterioration in the terms of international trade for developing countries specialised in the export of primary products, the so-called Prebisch-Singer Thesis, a hypothesis that has since become a core element of international economics. According to the Prebisch-Singer Thesis, integration into the world economy on the basis of exports of agricultural and mineral commodities works to the detriment of this group of countries, while at the same time the industrialised countries stand to benefit, disproportionately and systematically, from international trade. Hans Singer identifies the root structural cause of this interdependency, with its alarming implications for development policy, in institutional disparities in the labour markets of developing and industrialised nations. In connection with a mission to Kenya in the early 1970s that he headed, together with the 1 “The Hans Singer Memorial Lecture: Bonn to honour one of the 20th century’s outstanding development researchers” was first published as “The Current Column” on 11 May 2009. German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 1 renowned development scientist Sir Richard Jolly (IDS), on behalf of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Hans Singer also published some pioneering findings with immediate relevance for development practice. Together, the two development researchers developed the innovative idea of redistribution with growth, a concept that involved a reassessment and acknowledgement of the informal productive sector. Alongside the theoretical impulses he provided for development research, Hans Singer published a number of key conceptual contributions bearing on the development and qualification of international institutions, most of them part the United Nations system, including the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). The prodigious list of Hans Singer’s publications bears witness to an extraordinary creative power and at the same time serves to document the breadth of the interests that accompanied him in the course of his scholarly career, encompassing a period of over 70 years. He held his last lecture, on the origin of the 0.7 percent goal set for development policy, one week before his ninety-fifths birthday. It was no doubt his own biography that induced Hans Singer to work unceasingly for social justice, human development, and poverty alleviation, which he saw as the central concerns of scholarship and politics. He furthermore trusted in the ability of international institutions, and the United Nations in particular, to create and sustain peace. Hans Singer received broad international recognition and was honoured on numerous occasions; a total of five commemorative publications were dedicated to him in his lifetime. In Germany, the University of Freiburg awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2004. 2 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Hans Singer Memorial Lecture 2009 Hans Singer – A pioneer of development research Prof. Dr. Dirk Messner Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Colleagues, dear Friends, It is an honour for me to welcome you all in the name of the three Institutions here and in the name of our Institute, the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE). And it is an honour for me to present some introductory remarks on behalf of our colleagues focussing on the work of Sir Hans Singer and focussing on the relevance of Hans Singer for all of us as individuals, as scientists, as researchers and as political practitioners. I would like to make four brief points. My first point is that I would like to especially welcome the daughter-in-law of Hans Singer. She is here this evening as well as the grandchildren of Hans Singer. Thank you very much that you accepted our invitation; it is an honour and a privilege for us to have you all here. And you should feel in this room that for all of us Hans Singer was a very important person, a very special personality. For many of us he was important as an intellectual, as a great thinker, as one of the most important development researchers of our times. And he has written so many important papers, that all of us have cited so often.
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