Professor Michael Bruno passed away this morning (Thursday) at the age of 64, after a serious illness. Bruno was one of those who shaped Israel’s economy, and formerly served as Governor of the Bank of Israel and as Vice President of the World Bank. Bruno was to take up the position of head of the Hebrew University’s Dan Patenkin School of Economics in a few days time, but succumbed to illness. The funeral will be held tomorrow (Friday) at Har Hamenuhot in Givat Shaul.
Bruno played a pivotal role in the plan to stabilize Israel’s economy in 1985, together with the then Minister of Finance Yitzhak Moda’i and the then Prime Minister Shimon Peres. He was a senior member in the planning and policy-making team behind the stabilization plan, and a member of the committee monitoring its implementation. In 1986, Peres appointed Bruno Governor of the Bank of Israel, a post he held for five years.
Bruno was an independent, individualistic governor, who gave free expression to his viewpoints, often departing from those held by figures in the political establishment. Bruno played a role in reducing the inflation rate from 400% in 1984, to less than 20% in the last year of his incumbency. He led a restrictive monetary policy, contributing to the streamlining of the market sectors, in particular, the business sector.
Milestones: Deputy President of the World Bank, 1993-1996; Economic Advisor to the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and to the governments of Portugal, Turkey, Mexico and Yugoslavia; visiting professor at the London School of Economics, MIT, Harvard, the National Institute for Economic Research at Cambridge; and faculty head at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem’s Faculty of Economics.