Stanley Fischer, Fed Ex-Vice Chair and Macroeconomist, Dies at 81

New York: Stanley Fischer, a professor and practitioner of macroeconomics who helped guide central banks in two countries, Israel and the US, and mentored a younger generation of economic decision-makers, has died. He was 81.

He died on Saturday, the Bank of Israel said in a statement, expressing condolences.

Fischer, known as Stan, served as vice chairman of the US Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2017 following eight years as governor of the Bank of Israel, adding to a resume that included time at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spells at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and a stint as vice chairman of New York-based Citigroup Inc.The roster of MIT students he taught and advised included Ben S. Bernanke, who would go on to become Fed chair and called Fischer his mentor; Mario Draghi, a future European Central Bank president and prime minister of Italy; Lawrence Summers, who would serve as US Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton; Greg Mankiw, who would lead President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers; Kazuo Ueda, named Bank of Japan governor in 2023; and IMF chief economists, including Olivier Blanchard, Ken Rogoff and Maurice Obstfeld.

Countless other college undergraduates were introduced to the dismal science by Macroeconomics, the textbook Fischer wrote in 1978 with his MIT colleague, Rudi Dornbusch. The 13th edition of the book was published in 2018.

“It is hard to think of any other macroeconomist alive who has had as much direct and indirect influence, through his own research, his students, and his policy decisions, on macroeconomic policy around the world,” Blanchard wrote of Fischer in 2023. Fischer and Blanchard co-authored Lectures on Macroeconomics, published in 1989. -BB