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Stanley Fischer

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Not to be confused with Stanley Fisher.

Stanley Fischer
סטנלי פישר
Official portrait, 2014
20th Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve
In office
June 16, 2014 – October 13, 2017
PresidentBarack Obama
Donald Trump
Preceded byJanet Yellen
Succeeded byRichard Clarida
Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
In office
May 21, 2014 – October 13, 2017
PresidentBarack Obama
Donald Trump
Preceded byBen Bernanke
Succeeded byMichelle Bowman
8th Governor of the Bank of Israel
In office
May 1, 2005 – June 30, 2013
Prime MinisterAriel Sharon
Ehud Olmert
Benjamin Netanyahu
Preceded byDavid Klein
Succeeded byKarnit Flug
6th First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
In office
September 1, 1994 – August 31, 2001
Managing DirectorMichel Camdessus
Horst Köhler
Preceded byRichard Erb
Succeeded byAnne Osborn Krueger
3rd Chief Economist of the World Bank
In office
January 1988 – August 1990
PresidentBarber Conable
Preceded byAnne Osborn Krueger
Succeeded byLawrence Summers
Personal details
Born(1943-10-15)October 15, 1943
Mazabuka, Northern Rhodesia
DiedMay 31, 2025(2025-05-31) (aged 81)
Lexington, Massachusetts, U.S.
Spouse
Rhoda Keet
​
​
(m. 1965; died 2020)​
Children3
EducationLondon School of Economics (BSc, MSc)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD)
Signature
Academic background
Doctoral advisorFranklin M. Fisher[1]
Academic work
DisciplineMacroeconomics
School or traditionNew Keynesian economics
Doctoral studentsZvi Bodie[2]
Isher Judge Ahluwalia[3]
Frederic Mishkin[4]
Steven M. Sheffrin[5]
Olivier Blanchard[6]
Ben Bernanke[7]
Kazuo Ueda[8]
David Hsieh[9]
Kenneth D. West[10]
Greg Mankiw[11]
Jeffrey Miron[12]
Mark Bils[13]
David Romer[14]
Ricardo J. Caballero[15]
Michael Kuehlwein[16]
D. Nathan Sheets[17]
Ilan Goldfajn[18]

Stanley Fischer (Hebrew: סטנלי פישר; October 15, 1943 – May 31, 2025) was an American and Israeli economist who served as the 20th vice chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2017. Fischer previously served as the 8th governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 to 2013. Born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), he held dual citizenship in Israel and the United States.[19] He previously served as First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and as Chief Economist of the World Bank.[20] On January 10, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Fischer to the position of Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve. On September 6, 2017, Fischer announced that he was resigning as vice-chair for personal reasons effective October 13, 2017.[21] He was a senior advisor at BlackRock.[22]

Background

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Stanley Fischer, whose Hebrew name was Shlomo Ben Pesach Hacohen,[23] was born into a Jewish family in Mazabuka, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), on October 15, 1943.[24] When he was 13, his family moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he became an active member of Habonim, a Labor Zionist youth movement.[23] In 1960, he visited Israel as part of a winter program for youth leaders, and studied Hebrew at kibbutz Ma'agan Michael. He had originally planned to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but instead accepted a scholarship to attend the London School of Economics in England, where he received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in economics between 1962 and 1966.[24] Fischer then went on to graduate study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a Ph.D. in economics in 1969 with a thesis titled Essays on Assets and Contingent Commodities, written under the supervision of Franklin M. Fisher.[1][25] He became a naturalised citizen of the United States in 1976.

In 1965, Fischer married Rhoda Keet, whom he met during his days in Habonim; the couple had three children.[24] When they moved to Israel, Rhoda became honorary president of Aleh Negev, a rehabilitation village for the disabled. Rhoda Fischer died in 2020.[24] Stanley Fischer died from Alzheimer's disease at his home in Lexington, Massachusetts, on May 31, 2025, at the age of 81.[24][26]

Academic career

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In the early 1970s, Fischer was an associate professor at the University of Chicago.[24] He was a professor at the Department of Economics at MIT from 1977 to 1988. One of his students was former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke.[23]

In 1977, Fischer wrote the paper Long-Term Contracts, Rational Expectations, and the Optimal Money Supply Rule,[27] where he combined the idea of rational expectations argued by new classical economists such as Robert Lucas with the idea that price stickiness still led to some degree of market shortcomings, and so argued that an active monetary policy could help mitigate problems in times of economic downturn. The paper made Fischer a central figure in New Keynesian economics.[28][29] Through this critique of new classical macroeconomics, Fischer contributed significantly to clarifying the limits of the policy-ineffectiveness proposition.[30]

He authored three popular economics textbooks, Macroeconomics (with Rüdiger Dornbusch and Richard Startz), Lectures on Macroeconomics (with Olivier Blanchard), and the introductory Economics, with David Begg and Rüdiger Dornbusch. He also mentored and helped advise the Ph.D. theses authored by economists Ben Bernanke, Mario Draghi, and Greg Mankiw.[31]

In 2012, Fischer served as Humanitas Visiting Professor in Economic Thought at the University of Oxford.[32]

Public policy and banking career

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Stanley Fischer at 2000 in International Monetary Fund

From January 1988 to August 1990 he served as Chief Economist of the World Bank. He was then appointed First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and served in that role from September 1994 to August 2001. By the end of 2001, Fischer had joined the Group of Thirty, an influential Washington D.C.-based financial advisory body. From February 2002 to April 2005, after leaving the IMF, he was an executive at Citigroup, where he served as Vice Chairman, President of Citigroup International, and Head of the Public Sector Client Group.[33]

Bank of Israel

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Fischer was appointed Governor of the Bank of Israel in January 2005 by the Israeli cabinet, after being recommended by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He had been involved in the past with the Bank of Israel; he had helped implement Israel's 1985 Economic Stabilization Plan as an U.S. government adviser. He took the position on May 1, 2005, replacing David Klein (who ended his term on January 16, 2005), and was sworn in for a second term on May 2, 2010.[34] Fischer became an Israeli citizen, but did not renounce his U.S. citizenship.[35][36][37]

Under his management, in 2010, the Bank of Israel was ranked first among central banks for its efficient functioning, according to IMD's World Competitiveness Yearbook.[38]

Fischer was widely praised for his handling of the Israeli economy in the aftermath of the global financial crisis; in September 2009, the Bank of Israel was the first bank in the developed world to raise interest rates.[39]

In 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 Fischer received an "A" rating on the Central Banker Report Card published by Global Finance magazine.[40][41]

In June 2011, Fischer applied for the post of IMF managing director to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but was barred, as the IMF stipulates that a new managing director must be no older than 65, and he was 67 at the time.[42]

On June 30, 2013, Fischer stepped down as Governor of the Bank of Israel halfway through his second term,[43] despite high popularity.[44]

U.S. Federal Reserve

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American President Barack Obama nominated Fischer to the position of Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve, the United States' central bank, in January 2014. In nominating Fischer for the position, Obama stated he brought "decades of leadership and expertise from various roles, including serving at the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of Israel."[45]

On May 21, 2014, the Senate confirmed Fischer's appointment to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.[46] In a separate vote on June 12, he was confirmed as the vice chair.[46] Fischer succeeded Janet Yellen as vice chair; Yellen had become Chair of the Federal Reserve earlier in 2014. Fischer resigned for personal reasons in mid-October 2017, 8 months before the expiry in June 2018 of his term as vice chair.[47][48]

Awards and recognition

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Fischer received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2006.[49] In October 2010, Fischer was declared Central Bank Governor of the Year by Euromoney magazine.[50]

He was a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended its conferences in 1996, 1998, and 1999. He also appears to have attended the Bilderberg Group's conference in 2011 in St. Moritz, Switzerland,[51] though (as of March 2016) his name does not show up on the list of participants for the year 2011. He was a Distinguished Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. Fischer was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 2013. He was also a member of the Inter-American Dialogue.[52]

References

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  1. ^ a b Fisher, Stanley (1969). Essays on assets and contingent commodities (Ph.D.). MIT. hdl:1721.1/13873. Retrieved May 25, 2017.
  2. ^ Bodie, Zvi (1975). Hedging against inflation (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved May 23, 2017.
  3. ^ Ahluwalia, Isher Judge (1976). A macro-econometric model of the Indian economy analyzing inflation during 1951-1973 (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
  4. ^ Mishkin, Frederic Stanley (1976). Illiquidity, the demand for consumer durables, and monetary policy (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved May 24, 2017.
  5. ^ Sheffrin, Steven M. (1976). Rational expectations and employment fluctuations (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved May 31, 2017.
  6. ^ Blanchard, Olivier (1977). Two essays on economic fluctuations (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved February 1, 2017.
  7. ^ Bernanke, Ben (1979). Long-term commitments, dynamic optimization, and the business cycle (PDF) (PhD). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved October 23, 2016.
  8. ^ Ueda, Kazuo (1980). Dynamic Interactions Between Trade Flows and Exchange rates (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved April 24, 2024.
  9. ^ Hsieh, David Arthur (1981). Expectations and efficiencies in international markets (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved May 27, 2017.
  10. ^ West, Kenneth D. (1983). Inventory models and backlog costs : an empirical investigation (PDF) (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
  11. ^ "A Profile of Stanley Fischer". GREG MANKIW'S BLOG. September 19, 2016.
  12. ^ Miron, Jeffrey Alan (1984). The economics of seasonal time series (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved May 27, 2017.
  13. ^ Bils, Mark (1985). Essays on the cyclical behavior of cost and price (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved May 27, 2017.
  14. ^ Romer, David (1985). General equilibrium analysis of government financial policies (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved May 24, 2017.
  15. ^ Caballero, Ricardo J. (1988). The Stochastic Behavior of Consumption and Savings (PDF) (Ph.D.). MIT. Retrieved October 17, 2016.
  16. ^ "Michael Kuehlwein". The Mathematics Genealogy Project. Retrieved August 27, 2021.
  17. ^ Sheets, D. Nathan (1993). Essays in intersectoral economics: exchange rates, public capital and productivity (Ph.D.). MIT. hdl:1721.1/12708. Retrieved May 27, 2017.
  18. ^ Goldfajn, Ilan (1995). On public debt and exchange rates (Ph.D.). MIT. hdl:1721.1/11082. Retrieved May 25, 2017.
  19. ^ Stanley Fischer firms as top choice to become US Fed vice, The Sydney Morning Herald, via Bloomberg News, December 12, 2013.
  20. ^ Ewing, Jack (June 12, 2011). "Bank of Israel Chief Enters Race to Lead I.M.F". The New York Times.
  21. ^ "Stanley Fischer submits resignation as a member of the Board of Governors, effective on or around October 13, 2017". Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Retrieved September 6, 2017.
  22. ^ Fleming, Sam (February 13, 2019). "Former Fed vice-chair Stanley Fischer to join BlackRock". Financial Times.
  23. ^ a b c Cohen, Nitzan (June 1, 2025). "Former Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer dies at 81". JNS. Retrieved June 1, 2025.
  24. ^ a b c d e f Hagerty, James R. (June 1, 2025). "Stanley Fischer, Who Helped Defuse Financial Crises, Dies at 81". The New York Times. Retrieved June 1, 2025.
  25. ^ Stanley Fischer at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  26. ^ Stanley Fischer, former Israeli central bank chief and US Federal Reserve vice chair, dies at 81
  27. ^ Stanley Fischer (1977) Long-Term Contracts, Rational Expectations, and the Optimal Money Supply Rule Journal of Political Economy.
  28. ^ Binyamim Appelbaum (December 12, 2013) Young Stanley Fischer and the Keynesian Counterrevolution New York Times. Retrieved December 15, 2014
  29. ^ Dylan Matthews (January 13, 2014) Stanley Fischer saved Israel from the Great Recession. Now Janet Yellen wants him to help save the U.S. Washington Post. Retrieved January 15, 2014
  30. ^ Galbács, Peter (2015). The Theory of New Classical Macroeconomics. A Positive Critique. Contributions to Economics. Heidelberg/New York/Dordrecht/London: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-17578-2. ISBN 978-3-319-17578-2.
  31. ^ "Good News". Greg Mankiw's Blog. May 18, 2011.
  32. ^ "Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Economic Thought" Archived May 12, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, Institute for Strategic Thought, University of Oxford, November 5–6, 2012.
  33. ^ "Stanley Fischer, Fed Nominee, Has Long History of Policy Leadership", New York Times, March 12, 2014.
  34. ^ Filut, Adrian (May 2, 2010). "Stanley Fischer sworn in for second term". Globes. Retrieved May 2, 2010.
  35. ^ Mitnick, Joshua (June 13, 2011). "Israel's Stanley Fischer Announces Bid to Head the IMF". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 30, 2012.
  36. ^ Odenheimer, Alisa (June 12, 2011). "Fischer's Age, Nationality Are Hurdles in Bid for IMF Post". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on June 14, 2011. Retrieved December 30, 2012.
  37. ^ Klein, Zeev (January 19, 2005). "Bach c'tee approves Fischer". Globes. Retrieved December 30, 2012.
  38. ^ Viniar, Olga (May 20, 2010). "Israel's economy most durable in face of crises". Ynetnews. ynetnews.com. Retrieved October 23, 2010.
  39. ^ Levy, Tal; Bassok, Moti (August 25, 2009). "Israel central bank first in developed world to raise interest". Haaretz. Retrieved October 23, 2010.
  40. ^ "World's Top Central Bankers 2009". Global Finance. September 28, 2010. Retrieved October 23, 2010.
  41. ^ "Global Finance Magazine names the World's Top Central Bankers 2010". Global Finance. September 9, 2010. Retrieved October 23, 2010.
  42. ^ Wroughton, Lesley (June 13, 2011). "Lagarde, Carstens shortlisted for IMF race-officials". Reuters.
  43. ^ "Stanley Fischer to step down as BOI chief". Ynetnews. Ynet News. January 29, 2013. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  44. ^ Dylan Matthews (February 15, 2013). "Stan Fischer saved Israel's economy. Can he save America's?". Washington Post. Archived from the original on February 16, 2013.
  45. ^ "Obama Nominates Former Bank of Israel Chief Stanley Fischer as Fed Vice Chairman". Ha'aretz. Retrieved January 6, 2018.
  46. ^ a b Puzzanghera, Jim (June 12, 2014). "Senate confirms Brainard, Powell for Fed seats, Fischer as vice chair". The Los Angeles Times.
  47. ^ Liesman, Steve (December 21, 2017). "Larry Lindsey being considered for Fed vice chair job: Sources". CNBC. Retrieved January 6, 2018.
  48. ^ "Stanley Fischer Quits No. 2 Post At Federal Reserve". Forward Magazine. Reuters. September 6, 2017. Retrieved January 6, 2018.
  49. ^ "Stanley Fischer: The Israeli economy" (PDF). bis.org. Retrieved October 23, 2010.
  50. ^ "Central bank governor of the year 2010: Stanley Fischer's bold moves show the value of experience". Euromoney. October 2010.
  51. ^ "Bilderberg 2011 list of participants". BilderbergMeetings.org. Archived from the original on August 28, 2011. Retrieved August 24, 2011.
  52. ^ "Inter-American Dialogue | Experts". www.thedialogue.org. Archived from the original on February 2, 2020. Retrieved April 11, 2017.
[edit]
Wikiquote has quotations related to Stanley Fischer.
Articles
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Chief Economist of the World Bank
1988–1990 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
Richard D. Erb
 First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
1994–2001 		Succeeded by
Anne Osborn Krueger
Government offices
Preceded by Governor of the Bank of Israel
2005–2013 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
2014–2017 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve
2014–2017 		Succeeded by
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