Stanley Fischer - Biography

Stanley "Stan" Fischer (born 1943) is an American-Israeli economist and the current Governor of the Bank of Israel. He previously served as Chief Economist at the World Bank.

Biography

Born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) on 15 October 1943, he obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. at the London School of Economics from 1962–1966 and his Ph.D. at MIT in 1969, all in economics.

Academic career

He was a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1977 to 1988, where he authored two popular economics textbooks, Macroeconomics (with Rüdiger Dornbusch and Richard Startz), and Lectures on Macroeconomics (with Olivier Blanchard). He was also Ben Bernanke's and Greg Mankiw's Ph.D. thesis advisor.

Banking career

From January 1988 to August 1990 he was Vice President, Development Economics and Chief Economist at the World Bank. He then became the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), from September 1994 until the end of August 2001. By the end of 2001, Fischer had joined the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty. After leaving the IMF, he served as Vice Chairman of Citigroup, President of Citigroup International, and Head of the Public Sector Client Group. Fischer worked at Citigroup from February, 2002 to April, 2005. He became Governor of the Bank of Israel on May 1, 2005, replacing David Klein, who ended his term on January 16, 2005. Fischer became an Israeli citizen, the aforementioned action being a prerequisite to this appointment. He has been involved in the past with the Bank of Israel, having served as an American government adviser to Israel's economic stabilization program in 1985. On May 2, 2010, Fischer was sworn in for a second term.

Under his management, in 2010, The Bank of Israel was ranked first among central banks for its efficient functioning, according to IMD's World Competitiveness Yearbook.

Fischer has earned plaudits across the board for his handling of the Israeli economy in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. In September 2009, the Bank of Israel was the first bank in the developed world to raise its interest rates.

In 2009 and 2010, Fischer received an "A" rating on the Central Banker Report Card published by Global Finance magazine.

In June 2011, Fischer applied for the post of IMF managing director to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but was barred as the IMF stipulates that a new managing director must be no older than 65, and he was 67 at the time. There is some discussion that his nationality may have influenced this decision.

Recognition

Fischer received an honorary doctorate from Hebrew University in 2006.In October 2010, Fischer was declared Central Bank Governor of the Year by Euromoney magazine.

Fischer received the award at a reception at the Willard Intercontinental hotel in Washington, D.C. during a World Bank and International Monetary Fund conference.

He is a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

External links

• Profile at the Bank of Israel
• Profile at the International Monetary Fund
• Profile at Bloomberg Businessweek
• Profile at Forbes
• Profile at the Council on Foreign Relations
• Profile at the Peterson Institute for International Economics
  • List of publications, 1994-present
• Publications at the National Bureau of Economic Research

• Column archive at Project Syndicate
• and MarketWatch
• Interview: Stanley Fischer, Commanding Heights, PBS, May 9, 2001

Articles

• "Exchange Rate Regimes: Is the Bipolar View Correct?", International Monetary Fund, Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government, American Economic Association and the Society of Government Economists. Delivered at the Meetings of the American Economic Association, New Orleans, January 6, 2001
• Stanley Fischer: The Life of an Internationally Renowned Economist, Citigroup, August 13, 2004
• Why so gloomy on the global economy?, The Banker, 4 October 2004
• Citigroup's Fischer to Head Israel's Central Bank, Bloomberg, January 9, 2005
• Israel looks to US for bank chief, BBC News, 10 January 2005
• C. Peter McColough Series on International Economics: The Israeli Economy: Thriving in a Complicated Environment, Council on Foreign Relations, October 18, 2007