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.
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.