MIT’s Golub Center for Finance and Policy names Stanley Fischer as winner of the first Miriam Pozen Prize

$200,000 prize will be awarded to Dr. Fischer for his outstanding research and leadership in financial policy

Fellowship named in Dr. Fischer’s honor will be awarded to an MIT Sloan MBA student

Dr. Fischer will deliver the inaugural Miriam Pozen Address at MIT in spring 2021

Cambridge, Mass., September 10, 2020 — The Golub Center for Finance and Policy (GCFP) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an Institute-wide initiative that works to improve financial policy, today announced that Stanley Fischer has been awarded the first Miriam Pozen Prize in recognition of his outstanding research and leadership in financial policy.

Dr. Fischer’s distinguished career in academics and in the practice of financial policy includes positions at the University of Chicago and MIT, where he undertook groundbreaking research in economic theory. Dr. Fischer also has served in senior positions at the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Bank of Israel and the Federal Reserve, where he shaped financial policy that promoted stability and growth.

Deborah J. Lucas, Director of the GCFP, Sloan Distinguished Professor of Finance, and co-head of the distinguished panel of judges for the prize, noted, “Both in theory and practice, Dr. Fischer’s career has greatly improved financial policy, bringing both scholarship and compassion to the challenging issues that affect the economy, with impacts that ranged from groundbreaking works in economic theory to teaching and mentoring a generation of scholars and practitioners.”

Robert C. Merton, Co-Director of the GCFP and School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management, who served as the other co-head of the panel of judges, added, “There could be no better winner for the first Miriam Pozen Prize. I have known Stan since we were in graduate school at MIT, and his accomplishments far exceed the great promise of those days. He is a towering figure in the arena of financial policy, and we are indebted to him for his consequential contributions to the science and practice of the field.”

Added Dr. Fischer, “I am honored by this recognition from the Golub Center for Finance and Policy, which has done so much to advance independent and interdisciplinary study of the nexus between governments, financial institutions and the financial system. I thank the Golub Center, the members of the panel of judges who made the decision, and Robert Pozen, for his generosity in providing funding for the prize and fellowship.”

The Miriam Pozen Prize is awarded biennially in honor of the late mother of Robert C. Pozen, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan who has generously funded the prize. In addition to the $200,000 prize, a fellowship that will be awarded to an incoming MIT Sloan MBA student will be named in Dr. Fischer’s honor. Dr. Fischer will be honored at MIT Sloan in spring 2021, when he will deliver the inaugural Miriam Pozen Address.

“I am pleased that the judges have chosen Dr. Stanley Fischer as the first recipient of the Miriam Pozen Prize,” said Robert Pozen. “Having held senior positions in academia, government and business, Dr. Fischer embodies the kind of engagement in all aspects of financial policy that is needed if we are to continue integrating theory and practice in this field.”

Dr. Fischer holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in economics from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in economics from MIT. His academic career included serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago and as a Professor in MIT’s Department of Economics until 1998. His works ranged from popular economics textbooks to the seminal paper “Long-Term Contracts, Rational Expectations, and the Optimal Money Supply Rule,” which demonstrated how monetary policy can mitigate downturns.

Following his academic career, Dr. Fischer held senior positions in government and business. In 1988, he was named Vice President, Development Economics and Chief Economist at the World Bank. From 1994 until 2001, he served as First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. Subsequently, he served from 2002-05 as Vice Chairman of Citigroup, President of Citigroup International and Head of the Public Sector Client Group. From 2005 until 2013, Dr. Fischer served as Governor of the Bank of Israel. From 2014-17, he served as vice chair of the Federal Reserve in the United States.

About the Miriam Pozen Prize

The Miriam Pozen Prize recognizes outstanding research or practice in financial policy by an academic or practitioner. It honors the late mother of Robert C. Pozen, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a member of the GCFP’s Advisory Board who provided funding for the prize as well as a fellowship to be awarded to a student at MIT Sloan.

Pozen, who formerly served as president of Fidelity Investments and executive chairman of MFS Investment Management, has extensive experience in public service. He served as associate general counsel of the SEC in the 1970s, and chairman of the SEC's Advisory Committee on Financial Reporting in 2007-08. He was a member of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security and also served as Massachusetts Secretary of Economic Affairs under Governor Mitt Romney.

The panel of judges for the prize included the co-chairs, Deborah J. Lucas and Robert C. Merton. Other members of the judging panel include: Mohamed A. El-Erian, Chief Economic Adviser at Allianz, the corporate parent of PIMCO; Kristin J. Forbes, the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Professor of Management and Global Economics at MIT Sloan; Ronald P. O’Hanley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of State Street Corporation; Henry M. Paulson, Jr., Chairman of the Paulson Institute; Raghuram R. Rajan, Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business; and Robert Zoellick, senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

About the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy

The mission of the Golub Center is to serve as a catalyst for innovative, cross-disciplinary and non-partisan research and educational initiatives that address the unique challenges facing governments in their role as financial institutions and as regulators of the financial system. The Center is building a foundation that will support transformative improvements in the development and execution of financial policy today and in the decades to come. It leverages the Institute’s reputation of academic excellence and commitment to public service, and the acumen of MIT Sloan. For more information on the GCFP, please visit: gcfp.mit.edu.

About the MIT Sloan School of Management

The MIT Sloan School of Management is where smart, independent leaders come together to solve problems, create new organizations, and improve the world. Learn more at mitsloan.mit.edu.