Jan Švejnar

Jan Švejnar (2018)

Jan Švejnar (born October 2, 1952 in Prague ) is a Czech - American economist.

Life

In 1970, during the so-called " normalization " period after the Prague Spring , Švejnar went into exile with his parents in Geneva . In 1981 he applied for US citizenship. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked when he left the country, but returned after the political change in Eastern Europe. Švejnar has been married to the economist Katherine Terrell since 1979, with whom he has a son and a daughter.

education

He later traveled on to the United States, where he studied economics at Cornell University in Ithaca . In 1974 he finished his studies here with a bachelor's degree . He continued his studies at Princeton University , where he graduated with a master's degree in 1976 . He then did his doctorate at Princeton University (1979), but also worked as a research assistant at Cornell University until 1983.

Career

In the 1980s, Švejnar worked in various international business organizations, from 1983 to 1984 at the OECD in Paris . He has been an advisor to the World Bank since 1984 . At the same time, however, he continued teaching at Cornell University after 1983 until he became a professor at the University of Pittsburgh in 1987 . In 1990 he returned to Czechoslovakia on a World Bank mission.

He advised the President Václav Havel , the Czech Prime Minister Vladimír Špidla and other politicians on economic issues. From 1990 to 1994 he was a board member of the American-Czechoslovak Education Fund (ACSEF). Since 1991 he has been chairman of the Center for Economic Research and Postgraduate Education at Charles University in Prague . In the meantime he was the head of the Economic Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences .

Švejnar has been a professor at the University of Michigan since 1996 . From 1999 to 2003 he was a member of the supervisory board of GE Capital Bank and has been chairman of the supervisory board of the Czech private bank ČSOB since 2003 . He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and since 2006 adviser to the Hungarian and Turkish governments on economic issues.

politics

In December 2007 he announced his candidacy for the presidential election in the country. In connection with this, he put his activities as a supervisory board member in the private sector on hold. His candidacy was supported by the Czech Social Democrats and the Greens . In the third round of the election, Švejnar was beaten on February 15, 2008 by his rival, incumbent Václav Klaus . Neither in the first election, which took place on February 8, nor in the subsequent ballot, was one of the candidates able to gain the necessary majority of votes.

Web links

Commons : Jan Švejnar  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature and other media by and about Jan Švejnar in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
• Literature by and about Jan Švejnar in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ct24.cz ( Memento of the original dated February 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ nzz.ch