George Shultz, Distinguished Fellow 2004

George Shultz has made important contributions as an academic labor economist and as one of the most versatile and wide-ranging public servants of his generation. The remarkable breadth of his career testifies to the diversity of activities that can be tackled using the framework of economic analysis.

Shultz received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949 with a specialization in industrial relations and labor economics. His 1951 book, Pressures on Wage Decisions: A Case Study on the Shoe Industry, described how the shoe industry in Brockton, Massachusetts, responded to external competitive pressures, and how the collectively bargained wage structure evolved in the face of these pressures. His 1951 monograph with Charles Myers, The Dynamics of a Labor Market: A Study of the Impact of Employment Changes on Labor Mobility, Job Satisfactions, and Company and Union Policies, investigated the impact of the sudden closing of a textile mill in a small New Hampshire city. His book with Arnold Weber, Strategies for the Displaced Worker: Confronting Economic Change, offered an analysis of a variety of policy options to reduce the economic burden on displaced workers.

Shultz taught industrial relations and labor economics at MIT and at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business until 1962, when he was named Dean of the Chicago Business School. His success as an academic administrator and his background in industrial relations paved the way for his transition to public service. In 1969, Shultz was appointed Secretary of Labor. His executive and administrative skills led to rapid moves from the Labor Department to the Office of Management and Budget (1970), where he served as Director, and to the Treasury Department, where he was named Secretary in 1972. During his two years at the Treasury Department, Shultz led the United States delegation in the Tokyo round of negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Shultz left government in 1974 to become President of the Bechtel Group, a large multinational construction company. During this time he wrote Economic Policy beyond the Headlines with Kenneth Dam, a book that champions the use of economic analysis in a wide range of policy settings.

In 1982, Shultz returned to government with a new and, for an economist, more challenging brief: Secretary of State. He served in this capacity for six years and oversaw the evolution of U.S. foreign policy during a period that was marked by dramatic transitions within the Soviet Union. The policies from this time period are widely viewed as having played a critical role in ending the Cold War.

Since stepping down as Secretary of State, Shultz has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His 1993 memoir, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State, provides a detailed account of the diplomatic challenges that faced the United States during the 1980s, and how the State Department handled them.

George Shultz has achieved distinction as a scholar, an academic administrator, a corporate executive, and a cabinet-level public servant.