U.S. TreasuryDirector
National Economic Council27th President
Harvard UniversityChief Economist
World Bank
71st Secretary of the U.S. Treasury
Clinton Administration
Dr. Summers’ tenure at the U.S. Treasury coincided with the longest period of sustained economic growth in U.S. history. He is the only Treasury Secretary in the last half century to have left office with the national budget in surplus.
During the 1990s, as one of President Clinton’s chief economic advisors, he helped craft the U.S. response to international financial crises arising in Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Japan, and Asian emerging markets. The Economist recognized his influence when it defined the “Summers Doctrine,” an approach to economic policy during financial crises that fuses a microeconomic “laissez faire” mentality with macroeconomic activism. “Markets should allocate capital, labour and ideas without interference, but sometimes markets go haywire, and must be counteracted forcefully by government.”
President Bill Clinton said that Larry Summers “has the rare ability to see the world that is taking shape and the skill to help to bring it into being.”
Director of White House National Economic Council
Obama Administration
Lawrence H. Summers served as the Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama Administration.
As one of President Obama’s chief economic advisors, Dr. Summers’ thinking helped shape the U.S. response to the 2008 financial crisis, to the failure of the automobile industry, and to the pressures on the European monetary system.
Upon Summers’ departure from the White House, President Obama said, “I will always be grateful that at a time of great peril for our country, a man of Larry’s brilliance, experience and judgment was willing to answer the call and lead our economic team.”
27th President
Harvard University
Lawrence H. Summers was the 27th President of Harvard University.
Summers’ five years as President of Harvard represented a time of major innovation for the University. He focused on equality of opportunity and removing all financial obligations from students with family incomes below $60,000 a year. A move that other Ivy League institutions followed. He launched a major effort to make Boston, and Cambridge in particular, the global leader in life sciences research, with the formation of major programs for stem cell research and genomics. Perhaps most importantly, he led efforts to renew Harvard College with dramatic increases in study abroad programs, faculty-student contact, and collaboration across the University during his tenure.
Currently, Dr. Summers is the President Emeritus and the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University, where he became a full professor at age 28, one of the youngest in Harvard’s recent history. He also directs the University’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.
Chief Economist
World Bank
Lawrence H. Summers served as the Chief Economist of the World Bank.
As Chief Economist, Summers’ research included a report that demonstrated a very high return on investing in girls’ education in developing nations. In 1993, the Bank devoted its annual World Development Report to making the case for improving both the quantity and quality of global health investment. The Report, produced by a team led by Dean Jamison, made a strong case that the benefits of the right health investments far exceed the costs and is credited with drawing Bill Gates into the global health arena.
Summers and Jamison chaired a commission, timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the initial report, under the aegis of the LANCET. The primary conclusion of the commission was that our generation has the opportunity to achieve a “grand convergence” in global health, reducing preventable maternal, child, and infectious diseases to universally low levels by 2035. The necessary investments would have benefits that exceeded their costs by a factor of 10.
Summers has co-chaired major international panels, including the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness. Summers launched a Task Force on Fiscal Policy with Mayor Bloomberg and chaired the Commission on Global Health, lauded by the UN Secretary General who noted that it “will bring more than health – it will bring equity, and contribute to a life of dignity for all.”
