Jacques J. Polak

Who was Jacques J. Polak?

Jacques Jacobus Polak was a Dutch economist. He received his doctorate in economics in 1937 from the University of Amsterdam. His first professional work was with Professor Jan Tinbergen. In 1937 he began his international service as an economist with the League of Nations. He was a member of the Netherlands delegations to the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference establishing the International Monetary Fund and to the Atlantic City conference that established the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. During this period, he served at the Dutch Embassy in Washington. From 1944 to 1946, he was an Assistant Financial Adviser, and then Economic Adviser to the Director General of UNRRA.

He joined the staff of the International Monetary Fund in January 1947, serving first as Chief of the Statistics Division, and then as Assistant Director, Deputy Director, and from 1958, as Director, of Research. In 1966, he also became the Economic Counsellor of the Fund, a position which he held until his retirement from the Fund staff in 1979.