Larry Summers

Lore & Background

Summers became a professor of economics at Harvard University in 1983. He left Harvard in 1991, working as the chief economist of the World Bank from 1991 to 1993. In 1993, Summers was appointed Under Secretary for International Affairs of the United States Department of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton's administration. In 1995, he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his long-time political mentor Robert Rubin. In 1999, he succeeded Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury. While working for the Clinton administration, Summers played a leading role in the American response to the 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the 1998 Russian financial crisis. He was also influential in the Harvard Institute for International Development and American-advised privatization of the economies of the post-Soviet states, and in the deregulation of the U.S. financial system, including the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act. Following the end of Clinton's term, Summers served as the 27th president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty, which resulted in large part from Summers's conflict with Cornel West, financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with Andrei Shleifer, and a 2005 speech in which he offered three reasons for the under-representation of women in science and engineering, including the possibility that there exists a 'different availability of aptitude at the high end', in addition to patterns of discrimination and socialization. After his first departure from Harvard, Summers worked as a managing director at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co. Summers rejoined public service during the Obama administration, serving as the director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President Barack Obama from January 2009 until November 2010, where he emerged as a key economic decision-maker in the Obama administration's response to the Great Recession. He went on leave from his teaching responsibilities at Harvard and his role as the director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government in November 2025 due to an investigation into his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Reader's Guide

Summers was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on November 30, 1954, into a Jewish family. He was the son of two economists, Robert Summers and Anita Summers, who were both professors at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the nephew of two Nobel laureates in economics: Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow. He spent most of his childhood in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, where he attended Harriton High School. At age 16, he entered MIT, graduating in 1975. He attended Harvard University as a graduate student, receiving his Ph.D. in 1982. In 1983, at age 28, Summers became one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard's history. He was a visiting academic at the London School of Economics in 1987. He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 1993 and the Alan T. Waterman Award in 1987. Summers was on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan in 1982–1983. He also served as an economics adviser to the Dukakis Presidential campaign in 1988. Summers left Harvard in 1991 and served as the Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist for the World Bank until 1993. In December 1991, while at the World Bank, Summers signed a memo that was leaked to the press. Lant Pritchett has claimed authorship of the private memo, which both he and Summers say was intended as sarcasm. The memo stated that 'the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. [...] I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.' According to Pritchett, the memo, as leaked, was doctored to remove context and intended irony. In 1993, Summers was appointed Undersecretary for International Affairs and later in the United States Department of the Treasury under the Clinton Administration. In 1995, he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under Robert Rubin. Much of Summers's tenure at the Treasury Department was focused on international economic issues. He was deeply involved in the Clinton administration's effort to bail out Mexico and Russia when those nations had currency crises. Summers set up a project through which the Harvard Institute for International Development provided advice to the Russian government between 1992 and 1997. Summers encouraged then-Russian leader Boris Yeltsin to use the same 'three-ations' of policy he advocated

Did You Know?

• Summers was the first social scientist to win the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation in 1987.
• He received the John Bates Clark Medal in 1993 from the American Economic Association.
• Summers is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
• He went on leave from Harvard in November 2025 due to an investigation into his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"The country will not have to pay the piper. Through a combination of sound policy actions and a great deal of good luck we are well on our way to a soft landing and a period of growth and price stability." — Larry Summers "Lawrence Summers in: David Warsh (April 20, 1986) "Stockman's Timing Was Never Worse", Boston Globe, p. A1." — Larry Summers "Lawrence Summers in: David Warsh (April 27, 1986) "It Did Happen Here, Too", Boston Globe, p. A1." — Larry Summers "Takeovers wouldn't cause the stock market to rise unless there is an upward reassessment of earnings (potential). People are more optimistic and confident about the future." — Larry Summers