World Bank: US economist Sachs seeks top spot

WASHINGTON: American economist Jeffrey Sachs threw his name into the ring for the presidency of the World Bank on Friday. In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, Sachs argued his credentials made him a better candidate than the bankers and politicians usually put forward by Washington. “Unlike previous World Bank presidents, I don’t come from Wall Street or US politics. I am a practitioner of economic development, a scholar and a writer,” he wrote. A long-time adviser to the United Nations and to many governments on poverty issues, Sachs runs a research institute on development at Columbia University in New York. Sachs says he would bring the institution closer to cutting edge scientific research.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2012.