The Economist as Adviser in an International Organization

Some five years after taking up his appointment at the United Nations, Singer gave a fascinating insight into the views he had formed of the role of an economist as an adviser in an international organization, which could be seen in the work he performed. The ‘accident’ by which this happened is interesting. Singer wrote a review of a book by W. A. Jöhr, a professor at the Technical University in St. Gallen, Switzerland on Die Beurteilung konkreter wirschaftspolitischer Probleme (‘The Judgement of Concrete Problems in Economic Policy’), which appeared in the June 1952 number of The Economic Journal (pp. 385–7). Singer considered the book, which he described as being about the techniques of applied economics, as ‘a gem’ and of ‘intriguing interest’ as an introduction to the techniques and dangers of elucidating problems of economic policy for the economist acting in an advisory capacity to a national government on particular measures of economic policy. At the same time, having his own work in mind, he found it deficient in that it failed to deal with the problems and difficulties which confronted economists working in large international organizations.