Sachs, Jeffrey David

Sachs, Jeffrey David

(săks), 1954–, American economist, b. Detroit; grad. Harvard (B.A. 1976, M.A. 1978, Ph.D. 1980). He joined the Harvard faculty in 1980, and became a full professor three years later. A hands-on macroeconomist as well as an academic, he advised in the 1980s Bolivia, which was experiencing extreme hyperinflation. His success there—through deep cuts in spending and wages, collection of domestic debts, and other reforms—led to consultancies with other economically troubled countries. Among these were Venezuela, Ecuador, Poland, and Russia; he worked on the change from socialism to market economies in the latter two. He has also advised financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and has become an advocate of debt relief for and the provision of grants (not loans) to poor countries. In 2002 Sachs moved to Columbia as director of its Earth Institute (until 2016) and as a professor of sustainable development and health policy and management; he became a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development in 2016. He also has served (2002–6) as director of the UN's Millenium Project, whose aims included the reduction of poverty, disease, and hunger and the promotion of environmental health and gender equality, as director of the Millennium Villages Project (2005–15), and as director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (2012–). A prolific author, he is best known for The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (2005). His other books include Economics of Worldwide Stagflation (1985, with M. Bruno), Global Linkages (1991), with W. McKibbin), Macroeconomics in the Global Economy (1993, with F. Larrain), and A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2018).