Introduction and Overview

It has been said that anybody who lives long can reach the age of 85. True, but what is important is what they do during this time. There are a few economists who can approach, let alone equal, the achievements of Hans Singer. Indeed, such are Hans Singer’s achievements to date that this Festschrift is in fact the third such volume to be published in is honour! (See Cairncross and Puri, 1976; and Clay and Shaw, 1986.) Since the appearance of Hans Singer’s first publication in 1935, the productivity of his pen has been formidable. This fact is clearly demonstrated by the length, breadth and depth of his list of publications (reproduced in the Appendix) which ran, at the time that this book went to press, to some 98 books and pamphlets, 244 articles and 82 reports to international bodies and governments. As observant readers will have already realized, the length of Hans’ publication list exceeds the average length of the papers contained in this volume! While Gladstone supposedly continued to fell trees into his eighties and Bob Hope certainly continued to tell old jokes into his, it is clear that Singer is continuing to publish new papers embodying new ideas well into his eighties. However this list of publications — formidable as it is — fails to do justice to Hans Singer’s contributions to international economic life. As Alec Cairncross remarks in Chapter 2 below, there ‘are few of the developing countries that he has not visited and still fewer that he has not advised. He must have addressed a wider variety of academics in a wider variety of places about a wider range of subjects than any other economist, living or dead.’