Born: Born: January 19, 1947, Lipno, Poland
Early days. In 1970 he graduated with distinction from the Foreign Trade faculty of the Central School of Planning and Statistics in Warsaw (now the Warsaw School of Economics). Balcerowicz received his MBA from St. John's University in New York, in 1974 and doctorate from the Warsaw School of Economics in 1975.
Career. He was a member of the PZPR (Polish United Workers' Party= Polish communist party) from 1969 until the declaration of martial law in Poland, in 1981. In the late 1970s he participated in an economic-advisory team associated with the prime minister of People's Republic of Poland (official name of communist Poland). In 1978-1980 he worked at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. In 1981 he left the communist party and became an economics expert in the independent trade union Solidarity. After the fall of communism in Poland, from September 1989 to August 1991 and also between October 31, 1997 and June 8, 2000 he held the positions of Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Poland. Between 1995 and 2000 he was the chairman of Freedom Union, then a centrist political party. On December 22, 2000 he became the Chairman of the National Bank of Poland. He was also a columnist for Wprost, a popular Polish news magazine. On November 11, 2005, the President of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, awarded L. Balcerowicz with the country's highest decoration, the Order of the White Eagle, for his contribution to Poland's economic transformation. In 2006 he was elected member of Galeria Chwaly Polskiej Ekonomii, a hall of fame for outstanding Polish economists. Balcerowicz is a member of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, an independent initiative hosted by the UNDP and the first global initiative to focus specifically on the link between exclusion, poverty and the law. He is also a member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty, and is a Board member of renowned Washington, D.C. think-tank the Peterson Institute. He is a Fellow of Collegium Invisibile, a Polish academic society. On June 11, 2008 Balcerowicz was appointed chairman of Bruegel, a European think tank.
Balcerowicz Plan. The Balcerowicz Plan was a series of reforms, which sought to end hyperinflation and balance the national budget. The prices of most consumer goods were freed and caps for annual increases established in state-sector employees' wages. Poland's currency, the Zloty, was made convertible within the country's borders. This resulted in a substantial increase in prices and forced state-owned companies to become competitive. This amounted to a real shock to the Polish economy. The reforms were very controversial and made Balcerowicz an object of harsh criticism. On the other hand most economists agree that without this shock therapy, which sacrificed short-term gains for long-term growth, modern Poland would be a much poorer country. For example, Poland's annual growth rate between 1989 and 2000 was one of the highest of all post-Communist economies.
Honorary Doctorates. 1993 University of Aix-en-Provence, France; 1994 University of Sussex, United Kingdom; 1996 DePaul University, USA; 1998: University of Szczecin, Poland, Nicolas Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, Staffordshire University, United Kingdom, University of Dundee, United Kingdom; 1999 University of Economics in Bratislava, Slovakia; 2001 Viadrina European University, Germany; 2002: University of the Pacific, Peru, University of Iasi, Romania; 2004 University of Duisburg, Germany; 2006: University of Economics in Katowice, Poland, Poznan University of Economics, Poland; Wroclaw University of Economics, Poland, University of Gdansk, Poland; 2007 Warsaw School of Economics, Poland; 2008: University of Warsaw, Poland, University of New South Wales, Australia; 2009 Babes-Bolyai University, Romania.
Personal. Spouse Ewa Balcerowicz. They have three children:
Maciej (b. 1972) & Wojciech (b. 1980) & Anna (b. 1984)
• External links Leszek Balcerowicz at CSA Celebrity Speakers
• (Polish) Leszek Balcerowicz's Official Website In Polish
• (English) Interview with L. Balcerowicz by PBS 11/12/2000
• (English) Business Week Stars of Europe: Agenda Setters
• Leszek Balcerowicz's op/ed commentaries for Project Syndicate
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This article uses mostly material from the Wikipedia article "Leszek Balcerowicz".Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
Wikipedia
Other sources of information:
Official Website (in Polish)
Wirtualia (in Polish)
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