Alejandro Foxley

Alejandro Foxley was born in 1939. He is married to Gisela Tapia Soko, and they have two children and four grandchildren.

He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin in the United States, and received his undergraduate degree, Summa Cum Laude, in Engineering from the Catholic University of Valparaíso.

Foxley was a Senator from 1998 to 2006, where he served as the president of the Finance Committee for four years.

Since 1998 he has been a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. From 1994 to 1999, he was co-president of Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, and a member of its board from 1999 until 2005.

He led the Christian Democratic Party from 1994 to 1996.

He was part of the first cabinet of the government to be formed after the restoration of democracy in Chile, serving in President Patricio Aylwin’s administration as Finance Minister. He also worked as a governor of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Foxley has also worked in the fields of education and research. He was a visiting professor at the Institute of the Americas at the University of California, San Diego (1985), at UC Berkeley (1981) and at MIT (1978), all in the United States; and also at Oxford (1975) and the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, both in England (1973). He also served as the Helen Kellogg Professor of Economics and International Development at the University of Notre Dame from 1982 until 1989. He was president of the Corporation for Economic Research in Latin America (CIEPLAN) from 1976 until 1990.

He has received various awards throughout his career, such as: honorary doctorates from the Catholic University of Valparaíso (2006), the University of Wisconsin at Madison, USA (1993) and Notre Dame University (1991). He received the Great Insignia of Honor from the Republic of Austria (1994), was named a Royal Academic Correspondent in Moral and Political Sciences in Spain (1993), received the Ordem Nacional Cruzeiro do Sul award from the Brazilian government, and the Order of Civil Merit award from the King of Spain (1991).

He has written or edited twelve books about economics, economic development and problems in democracy.

Further information: www.minrel.gov.cl