Background
LITTLE, Ian Malcolm David was born on December 18, 1918 in Rugby. Son of Brigadier-General M. 0. Little and Iris H. (nee Brassey).
LITTLE, Ian Malcolm David was born on December 18, 1918 in Rugby. Son of Brigadier-General M. 0. Little and Iris H. (nee Brassey).
Ian Malcolm David Little was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. Called up in 1939, a few days after war was declared, he served in the RAF as a test pilot and was awarded the Air Force Cross for his skill and courage. The war changed him. He returned to Oxford with a sense of purpose and got a first in PPE, followed by a fellowship by examination at All Souls.
In 1970 (with Tibor Scitovsky and Maurice Scott), he published Industry and Trade in Some Developing Countries, in which he launched a searing critique of protectionism and the fetish of industrialisation at the expense of agriculture, whose damaging effects he chronicled with a battery of facts and figures. He drew attention to the way in which countries such as Taiwan were breaking out of stagnation with policies based on the promotion of exports, and advocated trade liberalisation as the key to growth.
Little inspired many. His teaching style was not flashy but his forte was the throwaway perceptive remark, the incisive comment that went to the heart of the matter. It gave him great pleasure that one of his doctoral students, Manmohan Singh, became India’s prime minister.
Of Little’s contributions the most important was to reconstruct accepted doctrines about development strategy. His work on India in the 1950s had supported central planning. But in 1965 he visited again and had the cardinal insight that economic progress in India and elsewhere had gone off the rails as a result of neglecting the efficient use of foreign trade. This idea was to provide the focus of his work for the next 10 years, during which he wrote two influential books. – both with others but he was the driving force. The first, Industry and Trade in Some Developing Countries (1970), was co-authored with Maurice Scott and Tibor Scitovsky. It advocated radical trade liberalisation, but not laisser-faire; it was in favour of using taxes and subsidies to offset domestic market failures.
Using empirical evidence as well as theory, it argued that trade protection, and inward-looking policies more generally, reduced employment and growth. It showed that east Asia was beginning to break out of stagnation on the back of export-oriented policies.
The book had a huge impact on development thinking and policy and its message has stood the test of time. There is now a wide consensus that an open trade policy is a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition of economic transformation.
Industry and Trade in Some Developing Countries (1970), was co-authored with Maurice Scott and Tibor Scitovsky
Project Selection and Planning in Developing Countries (1974), was written in collaboration with James Mirrlees, later a Nobel winner
Collection and Recollections (1999)
Economic Development, 1982
Ethics, Economics, and Politics: Some Principles of Public Policy, 2002
1950. A Critique of Welfare Economics
The Price of Fuel, 1953
His writings undermined the orthodox postwar view that protectionism and statist planning were the road to prosperity for the developing world. He was one of the leading intellectual progenitors of the shift towards liberal trade policies in many such nations, which lifted millions out of poverty in the last quarter of the 20th century.
In the 1950s Little had supported the centrally-planned policies pursued by the governments of many developing countries. But on a visit to India in 1965, he realised that such policies were leading to economic stagnation.
