Ian Malcolm David Little, CBE, AFC, FBA (18 December 1918 – 13 July 2012) was a British economist.
[1] The son of Brigadier-General Malcolm Orme Little and his wife Iris Hermione, née Brassey, Ian Little was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, where he read PPE, graduating with a First in 1947.
After the War, he began a DPhil at Nuffield College, Oxford under the supervision of John Hicks, with whom he clashed.
Hicks threatened to have Little's studentship rescinded, but Little was elected a prize fellow of All Souls College, Oxford in 1948, where he completed his doctorate.
[2] Little's doctoral thesis was published by Oxford University Press in 1950 as A Critique of Welfare Economics and proved to be influential, selling 70,000 copies.