Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers Joins the Brookings Institution

Outgoing Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers will join the Brookings Institution on January 22nd as the Arthur Okun Distinguished Fellow in Economics, Globalization, and Governance.

During his tenure at Brookings, Summers will research, write, and speak on
globalization and other domestic and international issues, while also pursuing other
interests outside the Institution. Arthur Okun, for whom Summers’ new position was
named, was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during Lyndon Johnson’s
presidency and was a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program
at Brookings from 1969 until his death in 1980.

“Lawrence Summers is the model for scholar-practitioners,” said Michael H. Armacost,
president of the Brookings Institution. “He is one of the world’s most renowned
economists and has been among America’s most successful secretaries of the Treasury.
It will be a great honor to have him at Brookings.”

Summers was appointed Treasury secretary on July 2, 1999, after four years as deputy secretary and two years as under secretary for international affairs, where much of his focus was on international economic and financial policy.

Prior to joining the Clinton Administration, Summers served as vice president of development economics and chief economist of the World Bank from 1991 to 1993.

From 1983 to 1993, Summers was a professor of economics at Harvard University and from 1979 to 1982 was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served as a domestic policy economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1983.

In 1993, Summers was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40.

Summers’ published writings include Understanding Unemployment. He was co-author
of Reform in Eastern Europe and edited the series Tax Policy and the Economy.
Some of his earliest work was published by Brookings. He has contributed more than
100 articles to professional economic journals and served as editor of the Quarterly
Journal of Economics for six years.

Summers received his B.S. degree from MIT in 1975 and his Ph.D from Harvard in 1982.
He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1954. He is married to Victoria Summers, a
tax attorney.