Hans Singer’s debts to Schumpeter and Keynes

This essay discusses Hans Singer’s intellectual formation and the influences on his early writings and on his post-1947 development economics. It asks what impact the unusual experience of studying with both Schumpeter and Keynes had upon his subsequent economic thinking and practice. It argues that the influence of both these mentors was surprisingly small, compared with that of Spiethoff and Clark. Singer repaid his debts to Schumpeter and Keynes, but by working in the new currency of development economics, some of which was his own coinage. His motivation for this vast effort was derived from the social egalitarianism of figures such as William Beveridge, Archbishop Temple and R. H. Tawney, rather than the liberalism of Schumpeter and Keynes