Douglas A. Scott :::
Douglas A. Scott, Ph.D.
Graduated in 1952
Inducted in 2000
A 1952 LTHS graduate, Douglas A. Scott, Ph.D. served as an international political economist, specializing in economic development and reform. Throughout his 30-year career with the International Monetary Fund, he focused largely on Asia, especially Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia, and held residential assignments in Indonesia (3 years) and China (4-1/2) years. As the Fund’s representative, he worked with government officials to encourage progress in areas with vital, long-term implications: central and commercial banking laws, monetary policy instruments and operations, foreign exchange systems and markets, tax policy and administration, intragovernmental fiscal relations, and economic and financial statistics. He has long believed what the world has learned the hard way: economic development moves forward only on the backs of sturdy laws and healthy institutions. As Deputy Director of the IMF Central Banking Department, Scott initiated new approaches on technical assistance to countries of eastern and central Europe. That experience, plus many years in senior management of the Asian Department, made him eager to accept appointment as the Fund’s first Resident Representative in China in 1992, just as China emerged from post-Tiananmen isolation and undertook a vital new program of reform. Scott graduated with honors in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and then served on US Navy destroyers in the North Atlantic. He received a master’s with distinction from Harvard Business School in 1961 and made a pivotal career decision by accepting an appointment as an MIT Fellow-in-Africa. He worked as a civil servant in Uganda for two years and Ghana for one year as those newly independent governments focused on establishing bases for economic growth. He won a Littauer Fellowship and received a Master’s in public administration and a Doctorate in economics from Harvard.