USAID Chief Economic Advisor Visits Azerbaijan

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Professor Arnold Harberger, Chief Economic Advisor to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is visiting Baku, Azerbaijan, through December 9, 2007, to advise the Azerbaijani government and the USAID mission on key economic policy and governance issues, including exchange rate management, monetary and fiscal policy, and public investment strategies.

Professor Harberger is a leading international expert and practitioner on economic development and consults widely with international organizations and with developing countries in Central America, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. His advice on such matters as inflation control and real exchange rate management has been critical to the solving of macroeconomic problems in a wide range of developing countries.

In the course of his long and distinguished career, Professor Harberger has made trailblazing contributions to the field of economics, including the now widely-accepted theory and methodology for measuring the gains or losses of a proposed policy change. Nearly every working economist utilizes "Harberger triangles" either formally or tacitly to make such measurements.

Having spent 38 years with the faculty of economics of the University of Chicago, Professor Harberger first began as a student, followed by his PhD, then most recently as the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus since 1991. He has been Professor of Economics at the University of California Los Angeles since 1984. Other academic positions he has held include visiting professorships at Harvard and Princeton, as well as the MIT Center for International Studies in New Delhi and the Institute for the Economy in Transition in Moscow.

Professor Harberger has served as a consultant to 16 foreign governments, nine U.S. government agencies, eight international agencies and foundations--including the International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank, and Organization of American States, and thirteen international corporations. Numbered among his students at the University of Chicago and the University of California Los Angeles are more than a dozen central bank presidents and two dozen foreign government ministers. Professor Harberger is past president of the American Economic Association, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

For more information about USAID, please visit: http://www.usaid.gov.

The American people, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, have provided economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide for nearly 50 years.

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