Jeffrey David Sachs (/ˈsæks/; born November 5, 1954, in Detroit, Michigan) is an American economist and Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. One of the youngest economics professors in the history of Harvard University, Sachs became known for his role as an adviser to Eastern European and developing country governments during the transition from communism to a market system or during periods of economic crisis. Subsequently he has been known for his work on the challenges of economic development, environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation, debt cancellation, and globalization.
Sachs is the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and a Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia's School of Public Health. He is Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on the Millennium Development Goals, having held the same position under former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He is co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the United Nations Millennium Project's work on the Millennium Development Goals, eight internationally sanctioned objectives to reduce extreme poverty, hunger, and disease by the year 2015. Since 2010 he has also served as a Commissioner for the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, which leverages broadband technologies as a key enabler for social and economic development.[3]
Sachs has authored three New York Times bestsellers in the past seven years: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011). He has been named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" twice, in 2004 and 2005.
Sachs was raised in Oak Park, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, and graduated from Oak Park High School. He attended Harvard College, where he received his B.A. summa cum laude in 1976. He went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, and was invited to join the Harvard Society of Fellows while still a Harvard graduate student. In 1980, he joined the Harvard faculty as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1982. A year later, at the age of 28, Sachs became a Full Professor of economics with tenure at Harvard.
During the next 19 years at Harvard, he became the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade, the Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development at the Kennedy School of Government (1995–1999), and the Director of the Center for International Development (1999–2002).
In 2002, Sachs left Harvard to become the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City. At Columbia he is the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and is also a professor in Columbia's Department of Economics and the Department of Health Policy and Management. His classes are taught at the School of International and Public Affairs and the Mailman School of Public Health, and his course "Challenges of Sustainable Development" is taught at the undergraduate level.
In his capacity as Director of the Earth Institute, he leads a university-wide organization of more than 850 professionals from natural-science and social-science disciplines, in support of sustainable development. Sachs has consistently advocated for the expansion of University education on sustainable development, and helped to introduce the PhD in Sustainable Development at Columbia University, one of the first PhD programs of its kind in the U.S. He championed the new Masters of Development Practice (MDP), which has led to a consortium of major universities around the world offering the new degree. The Earth Institute has also guided the adoption of sustainable development as a new major at Columbia College. The Earth Institute is home to cutting-edge research on all aspects of earth systems and sustainable development.
Sachs’ policy and academic works span the challenges of globalization, and include: the relationship of trade and economic growth; the resource curse and extractive industries; public health and economic development; economic geography; strategies of economic reform; international financial markets; macroeconomic policy; global competitiveness; climate change; and the end of poverty. He has authored or co-authored hundreds of scholarly articles and several books, including three bestsellers and a textbook on macroeconomics that is widely used around the world.
Sachs is known for his work as an economic adviser to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. A trained macroeconomist, he advised a number of national governments in the transition from communism to market economies.
In 1985, Bolivia was undergoing hyperinflation and was unable to pay back its debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Sachs, an economic adviser to the Bolivian government at the time, drew up an extensive plan, later known as shock therapy, to cut inflation drastically by liberalizing the Bolivian market, ending government subsidies, eliminating import quotas, and linking the Bolivian economy to the US dollar. After Sachs's plan was implemented, inflation fell from 11,750% to 15% per year from 1985 to 1987.[4]
In 1989, Professor Sachs advised Poland’s anti-communist Solidarity movement and the first post-communist Government of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. He wrote the first-ever comprehensive plan for the transition from central planning to a market democracy, which became incorporated into Poland’s highly successful reform program led by Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. Professor Sachs was the main architect of Poland’s successful debt reduction operation. Sachs and ex-IMF economist David Lipton advised the rapid conversion of all property and assets from public to private ownership. In Poland, Sachs was firmly on the side of rapid transition to "normal" capitalism. At first he proposed US-style corporate structures, with professional managers answering to many shareholders and a large economic role for stock markets. That did not fly with the Polish authorities, but he then proposed that large blocks of the shares of privatized companies be placed in the hands of private banks.[5] As a result, there were some economic shortages and inflation, but prices in Poland eventually stabilized.[6] The Government of Poland awarded Sachs with one of its highest honors in 1999, the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Cracow University of Economics.
Sachs’s ideas and methods of transition from central planning were successfully adopted throughout the transition economies. He helped Slovenia (1991) and Estonia (1992) to introduce new stable and convertible currencies. Based on Poland’s success, he was invited first by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and then by Russian President Boris Yeltsin on the transition to a market economy. He served as advisor to Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and Finance Minister Boris Federov during 1991-93 on macroeconomic policies. He received the Leontief Medal of the Leontief Centre, St. Petersburg, for his contributions to Russia’s economic reforms.
More recently, Sachs has turned to global issues of economic development, poverty alleviation, health and aid policy, and environmental sustainability. He has written extensively on climate change, disease control, and globalization, and is one of the world's leading experts on the fight against poverty and sustainable development.[7]
Since 1995, Professor Sachs has been deeply engaged in Africa’s escape from poverty. He has worked in more than two-dozen African countries, and has advised the African leadership at several African Union summits. In the mid-1990s he worked with senior officials of the Clinton Administration to develop the concept of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). He has engaged with dozens of African leaders to promote smallholder agriculture and to fight high disease burdens through strengthened primary health systems. His pioneering ideas on investing in health to break the poverty trap have been widely applied throughout the continent. He currently serves as an advisor to several African governments, including Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda, among others.
In his 2005 work, The End of Poverty, Sachs wrote "Africa's governance is poor because Africa is poor." According to Sachs, with the right policies and key interventions, extreme poverty — defined as living on less than $1 a day — can be eradicated within 20 years. India and China serve as examples, with the latter lifting 300 million people out of extreme poverty during the last two decades. Sachs believes a key element to accomplishing this is raising aid from $65 billion in 2002 to $195 billion a year by 2015. He emphasizes the role of geography and climate, with much of Africa suffering from being landlocked and disease-prone. However, he stresses that these problems can be overcome.[8]
Sachs suggests that with improved seeds, irrigation, and fertilizer, the crop yields in Africa and other places with subsistence farming can be increased from 1 ton/hectare to 3-5 tons/hectares. He reasons that increased harvests would significantly increase the income of subsistence farmers, thereby reducing poverty. Sachs does not believe that increased aid is the only solution. He also supports establishing credit and microloan programs, which are often lacking in impoverished areas.[9] Sachs has also advocated the distribution of free insecticide-treated bed nets to combat malaria. The economic impact of malaria has been estimated to cost Africa US$12 billion per year. Sachs estimates that malaria can be controlled for US$3 billion per year, thus suggesting that anti-Malaria projects would be an economically justified investment.[10]
From 2002 to 2006, Sachs was the Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to then Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals. Sachs founded the Millennium Villages Project, a plan dedicated to ending extreme poverty in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa through targeted agricultural, medical, and educational interventions. Along with philanthropist Ray Chambers, Sachs founded Millennium Promise, a nonprofit organization, to help the Earth Institute fund and operate the Millennium Villages Project.
The Millennium Villages Project, which he directs, operates in more than one dozen African countries, and covers more than 500,000 people. The MVP has achieved notable successes in raising agricultural production, reducing children’s stunting, and cutting child mortality rates, with the results described in several peer-reviewed publications. Its key concepts of integrated rural development to achieve the MDGs are now being applied at national scale in Nigeria and Mali, and are being used by many other countries to help support national anti-poverty programs. He works very closely with the Islamic Development Bank to scale up programs of integrated rural development and sustainable agriculture among the Bank’s member countries. One such project supports pastoralist communities in the Horn of Africa, with six participating nations: Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan.
Since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, Professor Sachs has been the leading academic scholar and practitioner on the MDGs. He chaired the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (2000-1), which played a pivotal role in scaling up the financing of health care and disease control in the low-income countries to support MDGs 4, 5, and 6. He worked with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000-1 to design and launch the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He worked closely with senior officials of the administration of George W. Bush to develop the PEPFAR program to fight HIV/AIDS, and the PMI to fight malaria. On behalf of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, from 2002-2006 he chaired the UN Millennium Project, which was tasked with developing a concrete action plan to achieve the MDGs. The UN General Assembly adopted the key recommendations of the UN Millennium Project at a special session in September 2005. The recommendations for rural Africa are currently being implemented and documented in the Millennium Villages, and in several national scale-up efforts such as in Nigeria.
Now a Special Adviser to current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Sachs is still a leading advocate for the Millennium Development Goals, frequently meeting with foreign dignitaries and heads of state. He has also become a close friend of international celebrities Bono and Angelina Jolie, both of whom have traveled to Africa with Sachs to witness the progress of the Millennium Villages.[11]
Sachs has been a consistent critic of the IMF and its policies around the world. He has blasted the international bankers for what he sees as a pattern of ineffective investment strategies.[12]
One of Sachs's strongest critics is William Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University. Easterly reproached The End of Poverty in his review for The Washington Post, and Easterly's 2006 book White Man's Burden is an even more thorough rebuttal of Sachs's argument that poor countries are stuck in a "poverty trap" from which there is no escape except by massively scaled-up foreign aid, though Sachs himself has clearly emphasized the need for a complex, multifaceted, clinical and unique approach to economic development, of which increased and responsible foreign aid is nearly always a necessary but insufficient part.[13] Easterly presents statistical evidence that he claims proves that many emerging markets attained their higher status without the large amounts of foreign aid Sachs proposes.[14] Other evidence is included in Easterly's previous work, The Elusive Quest for Growth.
Another Sachs critic is Amir Attaran, a scientist and lawyer who holds the Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development at the University of Ottawa. Sachs and Attaran have worked closely as colleagues, coauthoring a famous study in The Lancet documenting the dearth of foreign aid money to fight HIV/AIDS in the 1990s, which led to the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. But Sachs and Attaran part company in their opinion of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), and Attaran argued in a paper published in PLoS Medicine and an editorial in the New York Times that the United Nations has misled people by setting specific, but immeasurable, targets for the MDGs (for example, to reduce maternal mortality or malaria).[15] Sachs dismissed that view in a reply to PLoS Medicine, saying that only a handful of the MDGs are immeasurable, but Attaran then cited the United Nations' own data analysis (which the UN subsequently blocked from public access) showing that progress on a very large majority of the MDGs is never measured.[16]
Sachs has also been criticized by leftists for having an overly neoliberal perspective on the economy. Nancy Holmstrom and Richard Smith pointed out that, in advising implementation of his shock therapy on the collapsing Soviet Union, Sachs "supposed the transition to capitalism would be a natural, virtually automatic economic process: start by abandoning state planning, free up prices, promote private competition with state-owned industry, and sell off state industry as fast as possible…". They go on to cite the drastic decreases in industrial output over the ensuing years, a near halving of the country's GDP and of personal incomes, a doubling of the suicide rate, and a skyrocketing unemployment rate.[17] The Lancet[18] has recently reported that rapid privatization of the Soviet Union caused a 12.8% death rate increase among males in just two years,[19] a claim that The Economist attributed to alcoholism, though The Lancet article attributed the rise in alcoholism to changes in the economy.[20]
Sachs has received many awards and honors. In 2004 and 2005, he was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine. He was also named one of the "500 Most Influential People in the Field of Foreign Policy" by the World Affairs Councils of America.[21]
In February 2002, Nature Magazine stated that Sachs "has revitalized public health thinking since he brought his financial mind to it." In 1993 he was cited in the New York Times Magazine as "probably the most important economist in the world." In 1994, Time Magazine called him "the world's best-known economist." In 1997, the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur cited Sachs as one of the world's 50 most important leaders on globalization.[22]
In 2005, he received the Sargent Shriver Award for Equal Justice. In 2007, Sachs was awarded the Padma Bhushan, a high civilian honor bestowed by the Government of India. Also in 2007, he received the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution International Advocate for Peace Award as well as the Centennial Medal from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for his contributions to society.[22]
From 2000 to 2001, Sachs was Chairman of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health of the World Health Organization, and from 1999 to 2000 he served as a member of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission established by the U.S. Congress. Sachs has been an adviser to the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations Development Program. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Harvard Society of Fellows; the Fellows of the World Econometric Society; the Brookings Panel of Economists; the National Bureau of Economic Research; and the Board of Advisers of the Chinese Economists Society, among other international organizations.[22]
Sachs has received honorary degrees from Connecticut College; Lehigh University; Pace University; the State University of New York; Cracow University of Economics; Ursinus College; Whitman College; the Mount Sinai School of Medicine; Ohio Wesleyan University; the College of the Atlantic; Southern Methodist University; Simon Fraser University; McGill University; Southern New Hampshire University; St. John's University; Iona College; University of St. Gallen in Switzerland; the Lingnan College of Hong Kong; and the University of Economics Varna in Bulgaria.[22]
Sachs is first holder of the Royal Professor Ungku Aziz Chair in Poverty Studies at the Centre for Poverty and Development Studies at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for 2007-09. In addition, he holds an honorary professorship at the Universidad del Pacifico in Peru. He has lectured at the London School of Economics, the University of Oxford, and Yale University, as well as in Tel Aviv and Jakarta.[22]
In early 2007, the Sachs for President Draft Committee was formed to encourage Sachs to run for President of the United States in the 2008 election.[23]
In September 2008, Vanity Fair magazine ranked Sachs 98th on its list of 100 members of the New Establishment.
In July 2009, Sachs became a member of the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation's International Advisory Board.[24]
In 2009, Princeton University's American Whig-Cliosophic Society awarded Symington the James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service.[25]
In May 2012, Bryant University awarded him an honorary doctorate.
Sachs is the author of hundreds of academic articles and many books, including three New York Times bestsellers: The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (Penguin, 2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Penguin, 2008), and The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity (Random House, 2011).
He writes a monthly foreign affairs column for Project Syndicate, a nonprofit association of newspapers around the world that is circulated in 145 countries.[26] He is also a frequent contributor to such major publications as the Financial Times, Scientific American, Time Magazine, and The Huffington Post.
- Sachs, Jeffrey (October 4, 2011). The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity Random House ISBN 978-1-4000-6841-8
- Sachs, Jeffrey (2008). Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet Penguin Press HC ISBN 978-1-59420-127-1
- Humphreys, Macartan, Sachs, Jeffrey, and Stiglitz, Joseph (eds.). "Escaping the Resource Curse" Columbia University Press ISBN 978-0-231-14196-3
- Sachs, Jeffrey (2005). The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time Penguin Press HC ISBN 1-59420-045-9
- Sachs, Jeffrey (2003). Macroeconomics in the Global Economy Westview Press ISBN 0-631-22004-6
- Sachs, Jeffrey (2002). A New Global Effort to Control Malaria (Science), Vol. 298, October 4, 2002
- Sachs, Jeffrey (2002). Resolving the Debt Crisis of Low-Income Countries (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity), 2002:1
- Sachs, Jeffrey (2001). The Strategic Significance of Global Inequality (The Washington Quarterly), Vol. 24, No. 3, Summer 2001
- Sachs, Jeffrey (1997). Development Economics Blackwell Publishers ISBN 0-8133-3314-8
- Sachs, Jeffrey and Pistor, Katharina. (1997). The Rule of Law and Economic Reform in Russia (John M. Olin Critical Issues Series (Paper)) Westview Press ISBN 0-8133-3314-8
- Sachs, Jeffrey (1994). Poland's Jump to the Market Economy (Lionel Robbins Lectures) MIT Press ISBN 0-262-69174-4
- Sachs, Jeffrey (1993). Macroeconomics in the Global Economy Prentice Hall ISBN 0-13-102252-0
- Sachs, Jeffrey (ed) (1991). Developing Country Debt and Economic Performance, Volume 1 : The International Financial System (National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report) University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-73332-7
- Sachs, Jeffrey and Warwick McKibbin Global Linkages: Macroeconomic Interdependence and Co-operation in the World Economy, Brookings Institution, June, 277 pages. (ISBN 0-8157-5600-3)
- Sachs, Jeffrey (ed) (1989). Developing Country Debt and the World Economy (National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report) University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-73338-6
- Bruno, Michael and Sachs, Jeffrey (1984), "Stagflation in the World Economy"
Sachs lives in New York City with his wife Sonia Ehrlich Sachs, a pediatrician. They have three children: Lisa, Adam, and Hannah Sachs.
- ^ Janet Shan, "Keynesian Economist, Jeffrey Sachs Says President Obama’s Stimulus has Failed", June 7, 2010
- ^ Simon Zadek, "Sustainable finance is the way out of crisis", 29 August 2011 at openDemocracy.net
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ^ International Monetary Fund (April 2011). "Inflation, average consumer prices (%)" (flash). International Monetary Fund, April 2011 World Economic Outlook. Google. http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=k3s92bru78li6_&ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=pcpipch&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country_group&idim=country:BO&ifdim=country_group:parent:&tstart=335084400000&tend=682153200000&icfg&uniSize=0.035&iconSize=0.5. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
- ^ Left Business Observer #111, August 2005
- ^ Lipton, David and Sachs, Jeffrey. Foreign Affairs, 1990
- ^ The Earth Institute, Columbia University, 2008
- ^ United Nations Millennium Project, 2006
- ^ Booth, Mindy. UN Capital Development Fund, 2005
- ^ Medical News Today, 2007
- ^ Purcell, Myrlia. Look to the Stars: The World of Celebrity Giving, 2006
- ^ Sachs, Jeffrey. The Financial Times, 1997
- ^ Sachs, Jeffrey (2005). The End of Poverty
- ^ A Modest Proposal
- ^ Attaran, Amir. PLoS Medicine, 2005
- ^ Attaran, Amir. PLoS Medicine, 2005
- ^ Holmstrom, Nancy and Smith, Richard. Monthly Review, 2000
- ^ Stuckler et al., The Lancet, 2009
- ^ "Privatisation 'raised death rate'". BBC News. January 15, 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7828901.stm.
- ^ Mass murder and the market - The Economist, January 22nd 2009
- ^ British Broadcasting Company, 2007
- ^ a b c d e The Earth Institute at Columbia University, 2008
- ^ TruthDig, 2006
- ^ "?". http://www.snvworld.org/en/aboutus/news/Pages/NewsPage0907001.aspx.
- ^ http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/05/06/23651/
- ^ Project Syndicate, 2008
- Column archive at The Guardian (since 2002)
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Jeffrey Sachs on Charlie Rose
- Jeffrey Sachs at the Internet Movie Database
- Works by or about Jeffrey Sachs in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Jeffrey Sachs collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- A Bridge for the Carmakers (Washington Post, 2008-11-16).
- Podcast, University of Sydney, Economics for a Crowded Planet Public lecture, Sydney Ideas, July 14, 2008
- Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, on BUniverse, Boston University's video lecture archive.
- Jeffrey Sach's Reith lectures hosted by the Royal Society in London, during April and May 2007
- Article on Jeff Sachs in the Yale Economic Review
- Interview on PBS' Commanding Heights
- Interview on The Colbert Report, March 2006
- Economics for a Crowded Planet (video)
- Audio/Video recording of Jeffrey Sachs lecture as part of the University of Chicago World Beyond the Headlines series.
- Sachs addresses Harvard Law students in the Harvard Law Record
- Asia Society Video: Jeffrey Sachs on Water Security Issues in Asia April 17, 2009
- Jeffrey Sachs Speaker Biography on the World Business Forum where Sachs is a featured speaker for the 2009 event
- Audio: Jeffrey Sachs in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show The Forum
- Bio from Leigh Bureau
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