Jacques Jacobus Polak

Education

University of Amsterdam.

Career

He received his doctorate in economics in 1937 from the University of Amsterdam. His first professional work was with Professor January Tinbergen. In 1937 he began his international service as an economist with the League of Nations.

During this period, he served at the Dutch Embassy in Washington.

From 1944 to 1946, he was an Assistant Financial Adviser, and then Economic Adviser to the Director General of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. He joined the staff of the International Monetary Fund in January 1947, serving first as Chief of the Statistics Division, and then as Assistant Director, Deputy Director, and from 1958, as Director, of Research. In 1966, he also became the Economic Counsellor of the Fund, a position which he held until his retirement from the Fund staff in 1979.

After serving briefly as Adviser to the Managing Director, he was elected in January 1981 as Executive Director of the Fund for the constituency of Cyprus, Israel, the Netherlands, Romania, and Yugoslavia. He served with distinction as an Executive Director until 1986 when he retired for a second time.

Subsequently, in addition to engaging in a full agenda of research and writing, he served as a Consultant with the World Bank, as a Senior Adviser to the Development Center of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Organization of European Cooperation and Development), and, after 1987, as President of the Per Jacobsson Foundation.

The International Monetary Fund recently honored Polak by naming its annual research conference after him. Jacques Polak’s first publication appeared in 1937. He wrote more than ninety papers and six books

One of his main contributions was an analytic model published in an article by Polak in 1957 and today known as the Polak Model.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Economic Theory and Financial Policy: Selected Essays of Jacques J. Polak, 1994-2004

    (As former Director of Research and a founding member of t...)

  • Economic Theory and Financial Policy: The Selected Essays of Jacques J. Polak (Economists of the Twentieth Century)

    (This two volume set brings together a key selection of pa...)

  • Economic Theory and Financial Policy: Selected Essays of Jacques J. Polak,1994-2

Membership

He was a member of the Netherlands delegations to the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference establishing the International Monetary Fund and to the Atlantic City conference that established the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration).

Connections

Father:

James Polak

Mother:

Elisabeth F. Polak

Spouse:

Josephine Weening

child:

H. Joost Polak

child:

Willem L. Polak