| Grzegorz Witold Kołodko | |
| Order: | Finance Minister of Poland |
| Term Start: | 28 April 1994 |
| Term End: | 4 February 1997 |
| President: | Lech Wałęsa, Aleksander Kwaśniewski |
| Primeminister: | Waldemar Pawlak, Józef Oleksy, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz |
| Predecessor: | Henryk Chmielak (acting) |
| Successor: | Marek Belka |
| Order2: | Finance Minister of Poland |
| Term Start2: | 6 July 2002 |
| Term End2: | 16 June 2003 |
| President2: | Aleksander Kwaśniewski |
| Primeminister2: | Leszek Miller |
| Predecessor2: | Marek Belka |
| Successor2: | Andrzej Raczko |
| Birth Date: | 1949 1, df=y |
| Birth Place: | Tczew, People's Republic of Poland |
| Profession: | Economist |
Grzegorz Witold Kołodko (pronounced ; born 28 January 1949 in Tczew, Poland) is a distinguished professor of economics and a key architect of Polish economic reforms.[1] He is the author of New Pragmatism, an original and heterodox theory of economics. He has been a university lecturer, researcher, and author of numerous academic books and research papers. As Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance of Poland from 2002 to 2003, he played a leading role in Poland's entry into the European Union. During his earlier term from 1994 to 1997, Kołodko led Poland into the OECD.
He is the founder and director of TIGER – Transformation, Integration, and Globalization Economic Research at Kozminski University in Warsaw. He has served as a consultant to international organizations such as the IMF, World Bank, UN, and the OECD. Kołodko is a member of the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, Academia Europaea, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China in Beijing, a Professor at Huangzhou University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, and a distinguished professor at the Emerging Markets Institute, Beijing Normal University, Beijing.
After graduating from Main School of Planning and Statistics in 1972 and earning his Ph.D. in 1976, Kołodko lectured at the same university and was appointed to a chair in economics in 1984. In 1985-86, he was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. From 1982 to 1988, he was an advisor to the Governor of the National Bank of Poland. He participated in the historic ‘Round Table’ negotiations in 1989, which led to the formation of the first post-communist government in Eastern Europe. He was a member of the Economic Council of the Polish Government from 1989 to 1991.
He was a research fellow at the United Nations World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) in Helsinki in 1988, 1989, and 2002. From 1989 to 1994, he was the director of the Institute of Finance in Warsaw. He served as a consultant to the IMF Research Department in 1991 and 2000, and to the Fiscal Policy Department in 1992 and 1999. In 1994, he was a senior research fellow at the Institute of Finance and Monetary Policy in Tokyo. From 1997 to 1998, he held the Sasakawa Chair and was a distinguished research professor in development policy at WIDER. He was also a visiting fellow at the World Bank and a senior research fellow at Yale University in 1998.
Kołodko is the author and editor of 58 books and over 400 articles and research papers, published in 26 languages, with many in English. Notable books include “The Quest for Development Success: Bridging Theoretical Reasoning with Economic Practice” (Rowman & Littlefield - Lexington Books, 2021), “China and the Future of Globalization: The Political Economy of China's Rise” (Bloomsbury I.B. Tauris, 2020), and “Emerging Market Economies. Globalization and Development” (Routledge Revivals, 2018).
He has taught courses and seminars at Warsaw School of Economics (SGPiS/SGH) and Kozminski University, as well as at various universities in the United States, including Yale, UCLA, the University of Illinois, Wesleyan University, and the University of Rochester. He has led research projects and lectured globally.
Kołodko has received numerous awards for his research and teaching activities. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Lviv University in 2003, South West University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, China (SWUFE) in 2004, Finance University in Moscow in 2009, University of Debrecen, Hungary, in 2009, the International Institute of Management (MIM) in Kyiv in 2014, and Corvinus University in Budapest in 2019. He has also received honorary professorships from India Institute of Finance, New Delhi, in 2004, Nankai University, Tianjin, China, in 2004, Moscow Academy of Economics and Law in 2005, and Alfred Nobel University in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, in 2014. In 2020, he received the Special Book Award of China. He was nominated as the Best Minister of Finance in East Central Europe by Euromoney in 1996 and was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta by the President of Poland in 1997 for his achievements in managing transformation and development policy.