Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey David Sachs (born November 5, 1954) is an American economist and public policy analyst, professor at Columbia University, where he was former director of The Earth Institute.

He is known for his work on sustainable development, economic development, and the fight to end poverty.

Sachs is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

He graduated from Oak Park High School and attended Harvard College, where he received his Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in 1976.

He went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard with his thesis titled Factor Costs and Macroeconomic Adjustment in the Open Economy: Theory and Evidence, and was invited to join the Harvard Society of Fellows while still a Harvard graduate student.

In 1980, Sachs joined the Harvard faculty as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor in 1982.

A year later at the age of 28, he became a professor of economics with tenure at Harvard.

When Bolivia was shifting from a dictatorship to a democracy through national elections in 1985, Sachs was invited by the party of Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer to advise him on an anti-inflation economic plan to implement once he was voted to office.

This stabilization plan centered on price deregulation, particularly for oil, along with cuts to the national budget.

Sachs stated that his plan could end Bolivian hyperinflation, which had reached up to 14,000%, in a single day.

Although Banzer ultimately lost the election to the party of former elected president and traditionally developmentalist Víctor Paz Estenssoro, Sachs's plan was still implemented through plans that excluded most of Paz's cabinet.

Inflation quickly stabilized in Bolivia.

Sachs' suggestion for reducing inflation was to apply fiscal and monetary discipline and end economic regulation that protected the elites and blocked the free market.

Hyperinflation reduced within weeks of the Bolivian government instituting his suggestions and the government settled its $3.3 billion debt to international lenders for about 11 cents on the dollar.

At the time, this was about 85% of Bolivia's GDP.

Sachs has worked as an economic adviser to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

A practice trained macroeconomist, he advised a number of national governments in the transition from Marxism–Leninism or developmentalism to market economies.

In 1989, Sachs advised Poland's anticommunist Solidarity movement and the government of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki.

He wrote a comprehensive plan for the transition from central planning to a market economy which became incorporated into Poland's reform program led by Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz.

Sachs was the main architect of Poland's debt reduction operation.

Sachs and IMF economist David Lipton advised the rapid conversion of all property and assets from public to private ownership.

Closure of many uncompetitive factories ensued.

In Poland, Sachs was firmly on the side of rapid transition to capitalism.

During the next 19 years at Harvard, Sachs became the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade, director of the Harvard Institute for International Development (1995–1999) and director of the Center for International Development at Harvard Kennedy School (1999–2002).

Sachs is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

He is University Professor at Columbia University.

From 2001 to 2018, Sachs served as Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General, and held the same position under the previous UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and prior to 2016 a similar advisory position related to the earlier Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight internationally sanctioned objectives to reduce extreme poverty, hunger and disease by 2015.

In connection with the MDGs, he had first been appointed special adviser to the UN Secretary-General in 2002 during the term of Kofi Annan.

Sachs is co-founder and chief strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger that has come under scrutiny from critics and was the subject of a book by the journalist Nina Munk.

From 2002 to 2006, he was director of the United Nations Millennium Project's work on the MDGs.

He is co-editor of the World Happiness Report with John F. Helliwell and Richard Layard.

From 2002 to 2016, Sachs served as director of the Earth Institute of Columbia University, a university-wide organization, with an interdisciplinary approach to addressing complex issues facing the Earth, in support of sustainable development.

Sachs's 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.

Sachs has advised several countries on economic policy.

In 2010, he became a commissioner for the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, whose stated aim is to boost the importance of broadband internet in international policy.

Sachs has written several books and received several awards.

He has been criticized for his views on economics, on the origin of COVID-19, as well as on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Sachs was raised in Oak Park, Michigan, in the Detroit metro area, and is the son of Joan (née Abrams) and Theodore Sachs, a labor lawyer.

His family is Jewish.

He is an SDG Advocate for United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 global goals adopted at a UN summit meeting in September 2015.