Andrew M. Kamarck

Andrew M. Kamarck died at home in Brewster on March 10. He was 95. Educated at Harvard (BA, summa cum laude, 1936; PhD, 1951) Dr. Kamarck had a distinguished career as an economist spanning six decades, with service in senior policy positions with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, US Treasury Department and World Bank, and publication of six influential books. A year-round Cape Cod resident for 33 years, he was a stalwart of the local Democratic Party and a leader in civic and community affairs. At the beginning of World War II, he was confidential assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury, advising on economic aspects of the German mobilization and the war in Europe. A reserve officer, he was called to active duty in the Field Artillery in 1942 and earned two battle stars in North Africa and Italy before transferring to the Allied Control Commission in Italy, where he was in charge of the Banco dItalia, and in Germany, where, as US Chief of Financial Intelligence, he oversaw the recovery of looted gold reserves hidden by the Nazis in Saxony salt mines. He was awarded the War Departments Certificate of Merit. At Treasury after the War, Dr. Kamarck had a leading role in setting the financial and economic policies of the Marshall Plan, culminating in his service as Treasury Representative and Chief of the Finance Division of the Marshall Plan mission in Italy in 1949|50. In 1951 he transferred to the newly-organized World Bank, where he did his best- known, pioneering work in development economics, serving as Economic Advisor to the Banks new Africa Department in the immediate post-colonial era. Based on that experience and its academic applications to his appointments as Professorial Lecturer at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (over 20 years) and Regents Professor at UCLA (1964-65), he wrote his first two books: the definitive The Economics of African Development and The Tropics and Economic Development. Subsequently, he was promoted to be the founding Director of the Banks Economics Department, where he spearheaded a substantial expansion in economic research, launched an economics publishing program and created a cooperative world debt reporting system. Dr. Kamarcks 25 years at the World Bank were capped by his appointment as Director of the Economic Development Institute (now the World Bank Institute). He retired from the Bank in 1977 and, with his wife Margaret, an artist, moved to the Cape, where he lived and worked until his death. In retirement he was an Associate Fellow of the Harvard Institute of International Development and continued to research and write on economics. Troubled by both the imprecisions embedded in economic modeling and the coincident marginalization of rigorous economic analyses in public policy, he became a critic of modern quantitative economics, developing these views in a series of three books: Economics and the Real World, Economics for the Twenty-first Century, and Economics as a Social Science. Dr. Kamarck was also active in the local and state Democratic Party and civic and community affairs. He was a founder of the Cape and Islands Democratic Council, and served as Chair of the Brewster Town Democratic Committee, as State Committeeman and as a delegate to state and national party conventions. He served terms as President of the Housing assistance Corporation, the Center for Individual and Family Services, the Asclepius Corporation and the Harvard Club of Cape Cod. He was a member of the Economic Development Council from its origin in 1998. He was also known for his erudite and witty commentary in the editorial pages and letters columns of the local press. Dr. Kamarck is survived by three children, Ellen K. Davies and Martin A. Kamarck, both of Brewster, MA; and Elizabeth K. Minnich of Charlotte, NC.; eight grandchildren and five great grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at First Parish Church in Brewster at 11:00 am on Saturday, April 24. The family requests that he be remembered with contributions in his honor to the Brewster Conservation Trust.