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IMF Survey: Richard Goode, IMF fiscal policy pioneer, dies at 94
August 4, 2010
Richard Goode, first director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department and pioneering tax policy expert, passed away here in Washington on July 18. He was 94.
Richard Goode served as head of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department for nearly a quarter century (photo: IMF)
IN MEMORIAM
A pioneer of the Fund’s work on fiscal policy, Richard Goode’s influence is still felt in the institution he served for almost a quarter century. IMF First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky, who served under Goode’s tutelage some 30 years ago, said “Richard Goode’s combination of first-rank scholarship, expertise on operational fiscal issues, and understated manner earned him the deep respect of his colleagues.”
By the time Richard Goode, a U.S. national, was appointed as first Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department (FAD) in 1965, he was already established as a highly regarded public finance expert.
Goode began his career as a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. An early exposure to public finance came in 1950 as a member of a United National technical assistance team to Bolivia.
Mr. Goode then joined the IMF in 1951. He spent the next eight years working in the then Research and Statistics department, which was the heart and soul of the Fund’s analytic and policy work. In 1959, Goode took time out from the Fund to work with other leading tax experts as a scholar at the Brookings Institute until the mid-1960s.
During this time he solidified his stature as a leading tax policy expert, “especially after the publication of his long-indispensible book on U.S. policy, The Individual Income Tax,” recounts IMF historian James Boughton. This followed The Corporation Income Tax (1951), which Goode wrote while still at the University of Chicago.
In April 1964, the Executive Board established the Fiscal Affairs Department as a way to strengthen the Fund’s growing engagement in fiscal policy assistance and advice. With Fund management keen to have a leading expert at the helm, Richard Goode was a natural choice and he returned to the Fund from his position at Brookings in 1965.
According to James Boughton “over the next 16 years, until he reached mandatory retirement age, Goode built the department into a leading source of research on fiscal policy and of technical assistance on tax administration, public expenditure policy, debt management, and other fiscal issues.” Vito Tanzi—the first of only three others to hold the position of Fund fiscal policy director after Goode—agrees, recounting that Goode “assembled a group of good economists that, in time, made the Fiscal Affairs Department a leading public finance center in the world.”
While Goode’s role as FAD director further cemented his position as a leading fiscal policy expert, he was also a committed practitioner. Having worked with Goode for 16 years, Tanzi recalls that “equity in taxation was important to him and the technical assistance activities of FAD gave considerable weight to this objective.”
However, Goode’s influence was extensive, reaching well beyond the corridors of the IMF, as reflected in the 1983 tome Comparative Tax Studies: Essays in Honor of Richard Goode.
Goode’s passion for the subject matter continued well after he retired from the Fund in 1981. In 1984 he published Government Finance in Developing Countries, which was described a year later by Joseph Froomkin in a University of Chicago journal as a “valedictory to three decades of involvement with the budgetary and fiscal affairs of the poorer countries of the world.”
And almost 30 years later, not only is Goode’s fiscal legacy still present at the Fund, but his leadership role in the Fund’s early days provides a beacon of light as the Fund looks to the future. In remarks to Fund staff, John Lipsky said that “the current crisis called for creativity and leadership from our institution, including in helping Fund member countries face fiscal policy challenges. We all can find inspiration in Richard Goode’s example of excellence and intellectual innovation.”