Biography
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.
He was a member of the Polish communist party (Polish United Workers' 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. In 1978–1980 he worked at Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Later he became an economics expert in the independent trade union Solidarity, and was forced to leave the communist party.
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 Kwaśniewski, 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 Chwały 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 specificially 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. Fellow of Collegium Invisibile.
Since June 11, 2008 Balcerowicz has been a member of the board of Bruegel, the Brussels-based think tank on international economics.
Read more about this topic: Leszek Balcerowicz
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