World-Renowned Global Economist to Speak at Smith College

Jeffrey D. Sachs, the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) and the Center for International Development, will speak at Smith College at 4:15 p.m., Wednesday, March 3, on "What We Have Learned from the Emerging Markets Financial Crisis."

The lecture is in Wright Hall auditorium and is free, open to the public and wheelchair accessible.

Sachs serves as an economic advisor to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia and Africa. He also serves as co-chairman of the advisory board of The Global Competitiveness Report and has been a consultant to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Development Program.

The New York Times Magazine has referred to Sachs as "probably the most important economist in the world." Time Magazine has called him "the world's best-known economist." In 1997, the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur named Sachs one of the world's 50 most important leaders on globalization.

From 1986 to 1990, Sachs was an advisor to the president of Bolivia and in that capacity helped design and implement a stabilization program which reduced Bolivia's inflation rate from 40,000 percent per year to the current rate of 10 percent per year. Sachs is also one of the architects of Bolivia's debt-buyback program, which was the first case of a debt-reduction program in the 1980s and which successfully cut Bolivia's commercial bank debt by half. The Bolivian buyback became an import milestone in resolving the developing country's debt crisis. From 1988 to 1990, Sachs also advised the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela on various aspects of financial reform.

In 1989, at the request of leaders of Poland's Solidarity movement, Sachs prepared a draft program of radical economic transformation. After August 1989, he advised Poland's first post-communist government on the introduction of radical economic reforms in 1990 and 1991. In January 1999, Sachs received the Commanders Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, a high national honor bestowed by the president of the Republic of Poland.

From the fall of 1991 through January 1994, Sachs led a team of economic advisors for Russian President Boris Yeltsin on issues of macroeconomic stabilization, privatization, market liberalization, and international financial relations. He founded a non-governmental research unit in Moscow, the Institute for Economic Analysis.

In 1991 and 1992, Sachs advised both the Slovene and Estonian governments on the introduction of a new national currency. In both cases, the successful monetary reform enabled these countries to end hyperinflation and reestablish monetary stability. From 1991 to 1993, he also advised the Mongolian government on macroeconomic reforms and privatization.

In 1990, Sachs met with Pope John Paul II as a member of a group of economists invited to confer with the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace in advance of the Papal Encyclical Centesimus Annus.

In January 1998, Sachs was the first foreigner in the 43-year history of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party to be asked to deliver a keynote address at their national convention.

Sachs has published more than 100 scholarly articles and numerous books, and has been a frequent contributor to the New Republic, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, and to several magazines and newspapers in Latin America, Europe, and Japan.

Born in Detroit in 1954, Sachs received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Harvard College in 1976, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1978 and 1980, respectively. He joined the Harvard faculty as an assistant professor in 1980, was promoted to associate professor in 1982 and to full professor in 1983.