Stanford Report, June 8, 2001
Stanford economist Anne O. Krueger was named to the position of First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. The announcement was made Thursday by IMF Managing Director Horst Köhler.
Krueger, who was in Washington at the time of the announcement, will work with Köhler as second in command at the capital-based fund, which provides financial support to countries in monetary distress and seeks to promote stable economic growth globally. Krueger, 67, is expected to assume her new role -- which carries a five-year term -- during the summer, following the approval of the IMF's executive board.
"It's obviously very challenging," Krueger said of her new role. She said she plans to go on leave from her duties at Stanford.
Formerly vice president of the World Bank in the 1980s, Krueger is no stranger to Washington. She is now very much in demand there: In April, reports emerged that she was being tapped by President George W. Bush to join his Council of Economic Advisers. But the IMF post supersedes that offer, said Gavin Wright, chair of the Department of Economics and the William Robertson Coe Professor in American Economic History.
"It is a prominent and important job with high visibility," Wright said, adding that Krueger could face some difficult policy decisions: "You're on the front lines of some major battles – there's always some crisis somewhere."
A specialist in financial institutions and international trade, Krueger holds several positions at Stanford: She is the Herald L. and Caroline L. Ritch Professor in Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Economics, director of the Center for Research on Economic Development and Policy Reform (CREDPR) and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
As director of CREDPR, her focus has been on studying "liberalization and removing barriers to trade in developing countries," Wright said.
Henry S. Rowen, the Edward B. Rust Professor of Public Management, Emeritus, at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, called Krueger "a very distinguished economist. The fact that she was elected president of the American Economic Association is enough to tell you how she's regarded in the profession." Rowen added that Krueger has intimate knowledge of a number of the larger countries in the developing world, including India, Brazil and Turkey.
According to IMF spokesman William Murray, Krueger is the first woman in management at the IMF.
Krueger's recent books
include The WTO as an International Organization
(1998), The Political Economy of US Trade Protection
(editor, 1996) and Trade Policy and Developing
Countries (1995). In addition to being a
distinguished fellow and past president of the American
Economic Association, Krueger is a member of the National
Academy of Sciences and a research associate of the
National Bureau of Economic Research. From 1982 to 1986,
she served as vice president, economics and research, at
the World Bank. She was professor of economics at Duke
University before joining the Stanford faculty in 1993.
Krueger holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in economics from the
University of Wisconsin and a B.A. from Oberlin College.
