Jul. 2, 1999 to Jan. 20, 2001
Under President George W. Bush
Secretary of the Treasury
Lawrence H. Summers was sworn in as the 71st Secretary of the Treasury on July 2, 1999. He was serving as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, a position he began on August 11, 1995.
As Deputy Secretary, Mr. Summers was the second-highest ranking official at the Treasury Department. In that position, he took a leadership role in the Department's work on international policy issues, tax policy issues, issues relating to the financial system, domestic policy issues and enforcement issues. Mr. Summers also served as the American deputy in the G-7 international economic cooperation process.
From April 5, 1993 to August 10, 1995, Mr. Summers served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. In that position, he had broad responsibility assisting the Secretary of the Treasury in the formulation and execution of international economic policies. He was elected chairman of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Working Party Three in May 1994.
From 1991 to 1993, Mr. Summers served as Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank. As Chief Economist he sat on the Bank's Loan Committee, played a key role in the design of country assistance strategies and had overall responsibility for the Bank's research, statistics and external training programs.
Mr. Summers was Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University from 1987 until 1993. He was named professor of economics at Harvard in 1983, the youngest tenured professor in the University's history. Mr. Summers has written extensively on economic analysis and policy and is author of Understanding Unemployment, coauthor of Reform in Eastern Europe and he edited the series Tax Policy and the Economy, He has contributed more than 100 articles to professional economic journals and served as editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics from 1984 to 1990.
In 1993, Mr. Summers was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40. He was also the first social scientist to receive the National Science Foundation's Alan Waterman Award for outstanding scientific achievement. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Prior to coming to Harvard in 1983, Mr. Summers served as Domestic Policy Economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers during 1982-1983 and served on the MIT faculty from 1979 to 1982. He received an S.B. degree from MIT in 1975 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982.
Summers was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1954. He and his wife, Victoria Summers, a tax attorney, have twin daughters and a son.
- Text Courtesy of the Office
of the Curator