1. Sir Hans Wolfgang Singer was a German-born British development economist best known for the Prebisch-Singer thesis, which states that the terms of trade move against producers of primary products.
12 Facts About Hans Singer
1. 2.
Hans Singer is one of the primary figures of heterodox economics.
3.
Hans Singer was born in Elberfeld, Germany on 29 November 1910.
4.
Hans Singer fled the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933, arriving in the United Kingdom as a refugee.
5.
In 1938, Hans Singer applied for British citizenship, listing as references Keynes, William Beveridge, William Temple, and the vice-chancellor of Manchester University.
6.
When Hans Singer henceforth wanted to express these views, he too had to publish under his own name, which he did in a 1950 article on the costs of international trade.
7.
Since, it was well-known at the time that Hans Singer was the author of the 1949 UN publication on relative prices, it was referred to as the Hans Singer-Prebisch theorem, to indicate the primacy of authorship.
8.
Hans Singer attempted to create a "soft-loan" fund to offer loans at interest rates below market rates to be administered by the United Nations, but it was systematically blocked by the United States and the United Kingdom, which wished to retain control of money flowing out of the UN.
9.
Hans Singer was thus considered "one of the wild men of the UN" by Eugene R Black Sr.
10.
Hans Singer's ideas were influential in the establishment of the bank's International Development Association, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Food Programme.
11.
Hans Singer 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.
12.
Hans Singer produced about 30 books under his name and nearly 300 other publications.