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Meeting 3
‘Using the Ideas of Professor
Sir Hans Singer to Help Re-shape International Development
Policy’
Chair: Lord Meghnad Desai
Speakers:
- Edward Clay, Senior Research Associate, ODI
- Professor Sir Richard Jolly, Honorary Professor
and Research Associate, IDS
- Professor Raphael Kaplinsky, Professor of International
Development, Open University
- Simon Maxwell, Director, ODI
- Professor Frances Stewart, Queen Elizabeth House,
University of Oxford
Thursday 30 November, 6.00-7.30PM
in the Grimond Room, Portcullis House
Meeting Summary
1. This was the third meeting in the joint IDS, IIED and
ODI 'Development Horizons: Future
Directions for Research and Policy' series. The meeting
was designed as a memorial to Professor Sir Hans Singer, who
died in February 2006. It was chaired by Lord Meghnad Desai.
The speakers were: Simon Maxwell, Director of ODI; Professor
Raphie Kaplinksy (Open University); Professor Frances Stewart
(Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford); Dr Edward Clay (ODI); and
Professor Sir Richard Jolly (IDS).
2. Simon Maxwell gave a brief Introduction,
observing how relevant were Hans Singer's ideas to his own
current work programme - for example on poverty reduction,
aid architecture and the role of the UN. For an account of
Hans Singer's life and work, he referred participants to the
booklet
(1MB) prepared for the meeting, which included two detailed
obituaries of Hans Singer, and also a reference
to the biography by John Shaw.
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3. Professor Raphie Kaplinsky talked on the subject
of 'Hans Singer on the terms of trade'. His powerpoint can
be found here. In the 1950s,
Hans Singer had turned on its head the conventional wisdom
that the prices of manufactures would fall relative to those
of primary commodities, because of faster growth of productivity
in manufacturing. He had laid out the reasons why the reverse
might be the case, for example because of lower income elasticities
for primary commodities and the development of synthetic substitutes.
In addition, the existence of a reserve army of the unemployed
in developing countries would hold prices of primary commodities
down. From this perspective, the debate was really a proxy
for a difference between high and low income countries. For
much of the post-war period, the Prebisch-Singer thesis, as
it came to be known, was supported by the evidence, with primary
commodity prices falling relative those of manufactures. More
recently, however, the trend had been reversed, largely because
of the impact of China, as both exporter (of manufactures)
and importer (of primary commodities). Manufactured prices
had been falling, especially those produced by developing
countries, and primary commodity prices had been rising. Poor
countries now faced serious policy dilemmas, about the scope
for industrialisation, about the income distribution impact
of a boom in primary commodity sectors, and about the 'resource
curse', in which commodity booms tended to be associated with
war and corruption.
4. Professor Frances Stewart spoke about Hans Singer's
work on basic needs and human development. Her powerpoint
can be found here. She reminded
the audience that Hans Singer had been inspired by Keynes'
observation that the real resources of a country are its people,
and described his work over many years on topics related to
human development. In 1965, he had described different models
of development, focusing on the 'Antonine' model, referring
back to the heyday of ancient Rome and arguing that 'the key
concept must be the improved quality of people's lives', with
synergy between better quality of life and higher productivity.
This was a direct antecedent of the concept of human development.
Her own research had shown that human development was essential
for change: progress was fastest when growth and human development
went side by side; countries which emphasised growth without
human development always fell back; but countries which emphasised
human development and neglected growth could eventually recover.
The human development agenda was changing, however. There
needed to be more emphasis on groups rather than individuals
(the concept of horizontal inequality); there needed to be
a focus on wider human development issues not captured by
the relatively limited metric of the Human Development Index;
and new policy was needed to constrain the global capitalist
system.
5. Edward Clay provided both a short
paper and a powerpoint . He described
Hans Singer as a real world idealist, inspired by the Kantian
ideal of actively working for the rights of others, but also
committed to change. This combination was exemplified in Hans
Singer's work on food aid. His early work recognised the dominant
position of the US in the world economy and its role as a
major source of surplus food. At a time when food aid accounted
for up to 25% of all official development assistance, Hans
Singer contributed to thinking about how to use food aid constructively
for development, and also to the instituitonalisation and
multilateralisation of the flow, especially by helping to
create the World Food Programme. Today, however, Hans Singer
would have recognised a new reality, in which food aid was
a tiny part of aid, and in which most food aid was used for
emergencies. Current institutional arrangements like the Food
Aid Convention needed to be rethought. Instead, Edward Clay
proposed a new 'Humanitarian Aid Convention' focused on the
needs of individuals rather than the use of surplus commodities.
6. Finally, Sir Richard Jolly talked about Hans Singer's
work on UN reform, and also children, deriving in the latter
case from an early interest in human capital development and
his contribution to the early years of UNICEF. He recalled
Hans Singer's contribution to the foundation or development
of many UN organisations, including the UN Special Fund, which
became UNDP, WFP, and many others. He argued that the challenge
in 2006 was to reform the UN, but to do so in such a way as
to preserve its particular strengths. There were five of these:
its capacity for advocacy, based on independent thinking;
the channels of advocacy, from UN agencies to the highest
levels of government; the image of the UN (for example, UNICEF
as a champion of children); the flexibility of the best parts
of the UN; and its ability to disagree in public with the
Bretton Woods institutions. He thought the recent report of
the High Level Panel on System Wide Coherence, 'Working as
One', provided a useful blueprint, especially with its emphasis
on unified budget frameworks rather than unified budgets.
7. These presentations generated many reminiscences about
Hans Singer's humanity and breadth of interests, and also
some lively discussion about the themes presented:
a.) There was some debate about the robustness and durability
of findings about the terms of trade, but to the extent they
were correct, there were important questions for the human
development model. For example, primary commodity sectors
tended to be capital intensive, which raised questions about
how to deliver both human development and livelihoods for
poor people. The service sector might provide one source of
jobs, but was obviously limited. Perhaps African countries,
in particular, would need to protect their manufacturing sector
against Chinese and other competition? As an economist who
had 'dissented' from the conventional orthodoxy of the Washington
Consensus, Hans Singer might be expected to agree.
b). When asked about education, Frances Stewart noted that
education was a means and an end and that more education should
be provided in response to the increasing number of highly
educated people in the rest of the world. She also noted that
education was a constituent part of what it is to be an 'empowered
human'. Raphael Kaplinsky added that the important thing about
education was not that it would necessarily ensure a high
income, but that being more highly educated than others was
an advantage.
c.) It was noted that Hans Singer had worked a good deal on
global finance and macroeconomics, a topic not covered in
the presentations. He would doubtless have been concerned
about the accumulation of surpluses in Asia and about the
risk of instability. He was a committed structuralist.
d.) A question was asked about areas of agreement and disagreement
between Hans Singer and Dudley Seers. Both had been strongly
concerned with reducing poverty. Both had taken a perspective
which looked at both North and South and the relations between
them. One marked difference was that Dudley Seers had turned
against aid, especially in his later years, whereas Hans Singer
had not.
e.) Finally, Hans Singer's continual engagement with policy
was again emphasised.
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