Peter Thomas Bauer

After a brief period in the private sector working for Guthrie & Co., a London-based merchant house that conducted business in the Far East, Bauer spent most of his career at the London School of Economics.

[2] With the support of his friend and admirer Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he was created a life peer as Baron Bauer, of Market Ward in the City of Cambridge on 15 February 1983.

[3] Lord Bauer was also a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, which was founded by his friend Friedrich Hayek.

In 2002, he won the Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty; as part of his award, The Cato Institute cited his courage in espousing an approach almost universally opposed in post-World War II international economic circles.

Bauer sought to convince other development experts that central planning, foreign aid, price controls, and protectionism perpetuate poverty rather than eliminate it, and that the growth of government intervention politicises economic life and reduces individual freedom.

He opposed "compulsory saving," which he preferred to call "special taxation," and, like modern supply-side economists, stressed the detrimental effects of high taxes on economic activity.

The danger of aid, according to Bauer, is that it increases the power of government, leads to corruption, misallocates resources, and erodes civil society.