The first Hans Singer Memorial Lecture by Paul Collier on “Hans Singer’s legacy: The problem of commodity exporters revisited” took place on 18 May 2009 in Bonn.

Hans Singer combined in high measure three roles that today are seldom found together. He was, of course, a researcher: it is his most celebrated research that will be the subject of my talk. But he was also deeply engaged in the world of policy. When Hans Singer studied for his doctorate this was indeed a combination to which many economists aspired: his supervisor, John Maynard Keynes, provided the perfect model. Like Keynes, Hans Singer focused his research on matters of urgent public policy, and wrote to address a wide audience. Today, much of that has been lost: academic economists write for each other and have manifestly become too detached from policy.

But Hans Singer’s third role should also be recognized: he built organizations, first at the United Nations and then at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS). Building organizations takes flair and persistence. In the academic world such characteristics are rare: academics tend to be drawn from that part of the population that is clever but incompetent and so few manage to leave a legacy beyond ideas. That combination – research, policy, and organization-building – was what makes Hans Singer a role model.

Programme:

• Jörg Blasius, Institut für politische Wissenschaft und Soziologie, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
• Dirk Messner, German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), Bonn
• Sir Richard Jolly, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, UK

Keynote speaker:

• Paul Collier, CBE Director, Centre for the Study of African Economies at The University of Oxford Hans Singer's Legacy: The Problem of Commodity Exporters Revisited

Background:
Sir Hans Wolfgang Singer (born 29 November 1910 in Wuppertal-Elberfeld; deceased 26 February 2006 in Brighton), a renowned international economist and development practitioner has studied in Bonn, among others with Joseph Schumpeter, and graduated from the Economics Department of Bonn University in 1931. Being Jewish, he fled the Nazi terror in 1933. After World War II, he became an influential development scholar with the United Nations before joining the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University 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, University of Sussex) have established the “Hans Singer Memorial Lecture on Global Development”. The Lecture alternates between Bonn and Brighton on an annual basis. The second Memorial Lecture took place 2010 in Brighton and was given by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Assistant Secretary General, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) on “Hans Singer, Economic Development, Crisis, Recovery and the United Nations”. The third Memorial Lecture was given 2011 in Bonn by Professor Stephen Chan OBE, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London on "Mercy and the Structures of the World".