Leszek Balcerowicz was born in Lipno, Poland in 1947.
In 1970 he graduated with distinction from Foreign Trade faculty in Central School of Planning and Statistics in Warsaw (now Warsaw School of Economics). In 1974 he gained an MBA at St. John's University in New York and in 1975 he received his Ph.D. in economics at the CSPS.
Among his academic distinctions are visiting fellowships at the University of Sussex (1985), and Marburg University (1988). Since October 1992 Leszek Balcerowicz has been a professor at the Warsaw School of Economics, and since 1993 he has been a director of Chair of International Comparative Studies at WSE. He has given many lectures and seminars world-wide, in Austria, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Japan, the Czech Republic, India, Italy, Ukraine, Lithuania and the USA. He has over 100 publications on economic issues in Poland and abroad. He is a member of European Economic Association, Polish Association of Sociologists and Polish Association of Economists. In 1992-2000 he was a chairman of the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE) based in Warsaw.
In September 1989 Leszek Balcerowicz became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in the first non-communist government in Poland after II World War. He was also President of the Economic Committee of the Council of Ministers. In this vital period in Poland's transition he designed and executed the radical stabilisation and transformation of Polish economy. He retained his positions in the government until December 1991.
From April 1995 to December 2000 he was the president of the Freedom Union (UW). In Parliamentary Election 1997 he won with over 91.000 votes in Katowice district. From 1997 to June 2000 he was Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and President of the Economic Committee of the Council of Ministers.
In 1993 Leszek Balcerowicz received the Honoris Causa title from the University of Aix-en-Provence, and in 1994 from the University of Sussex, and in 1996 from De Paul University of Chicago, and in 1998 from the University of Szczecin, the
Staffordshire University, the Mikolaj Kopernik University of
Torun and the Dundee University in Scotland, and in December 1999 from Economic University in Bratislava.
In 1992 he was awarded the Ludwig Erhard Prize from the Ludwig Erhard Foundation. In 1998 Mr. Balcerowicz received "Finance Minister of the Year" title from the British financial monthly "Euromoney". In 1999 European Institute of Washington granted him "Transatlantic Leadership Award" for the most outstanding European personality in 1998 and he received the Central European Award for the Finance Minister of the 1998 in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2000 he was awarded the Friedrich von Hayek Prize.
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Curriculum vitae
