Oral history interview with Paul Streeten, 2001

Biographical Note

Senior Adviser, World Bank; Professor Emeritus, Boston University

Scope and Contents

(b. 1917) Early years: involvement in socialist youth movement; interest in human development; Blue Pilgrims; student of economics at Aberdeen University and Cambridge; 1940 incarceration and interment camp in UK and Canada; Heinz Arndt in internment camp; enlistment in army; injury in Sicily; 1945 Ministry of Overseas Development; Career: lecturer and fellow at Oxford; author of The Political Element; professor emeritus at Boston University; editor of World Development; deputy director general of the Economic Planning Staff of the UK's Ministry of Overseas Development; acting director of the Institute of Development Studies at University of Sussex; Warden of Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford; 1976-1980 and 1984-1985 senior adviser at World Bank; Themes: Austro-Marxism; collaboration with Gunnar Myrdal--first executive-secretary for the Economic Commission for Europe; cumulative causation; centralization of the World Bank; decentralization of the UN; impressions of Ava and Gunnar Myrdal and Michal Kalecki; intermediate regimes; foreign exchange gap; Indian Statistical Institute at Mahalonobis; fixed income distribution; internal politics at Ministry of Overseas Development; involvement in International Development Association (IDA) and Asian Development Bank; UNCTAD reports; development in India and Malta; "labor utilization" and "livelihoods"; third-world countries and basic needs (material and nonmaterial); calculations of economic growth; interdisciplinary problem-solving at UN; dissemination of ideas by UN; resurgence of neoclassical theory in development; gap between research and implementation at World Bank; human rights approach versus basic needs approach; structuralism and the World Bank; pessimism of UN, optimism of World Bank; UN intervention during human rights violations; international investment trust for recycling; necessity of international migration agency, international environmental agency, global taxing agency, and global central bank in UN; modernization of New International Economic Order (NIEO); fair compensation in global arena; bilateralism versus multilateralism; life expectancy projections; Human Development Index; cultural diversity and human rights; human sustainable development; poverty reduction and inequality; absolute and relative poverty; widening definitions of capital; import substitution and export promotion; free trade and protectionism; importance of teaching economic history; writing style and clarity of UN documents

Subjects

• Basic needs--Developing countries.
• Developing countries--Economic policy.
• Economic assistance.
• Economic development.
• Economic policy--International cooperation.
• Human rights.
• International business enterprises.
• International economic relations.
• Interviews
• Jolly, Richard, interviewer.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Poverty.
• Streeten, Paul--Interviews.
• United Nations--History.
• United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
• World Bank--Officials and employees--Interviews.

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, 2004