In Memoriam: Oleh Havrylyshyn
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In Memoriam: Oleh Havrylyshyn Vito Tanzi1 Accepted: 1 October 2020 / Published online: 2 November 2020 © Association for Comparative Economic Studies 2020
* Vito Tanzi [email protected] 1
International Institute of Public Finance, Munich, Germany Vol:.(1234567890)
In Memoriam: Oleh Havrylyshyn
773
It is always sad to hear about the passing away of a dear friend. It is worse when the news arrives unexpectedly, without any forewarning, and just few days after one has had social and professional exchanges with the departed. The shocking news came after a short time from the passing of another dear friend, Alberto Alesina, another well-known economist who was teaching at Harvard. They both left their families, their friends, and the economic profession that they had loved and to which had contributed actively during their professional lives. In recent months I had been in frequent contact by emails with Oleh because of the Palgrave Handbook of Comparative Economics that he was editing with Elodie Douarin, and because of an article on the economic implications of the ongoing pandemic that we were planning to write. Although, in recent years, we had been separated by distance, we had known each other since the 1990s when we both worked at the International Monetary Fund. Oleh had been Deputy Director in the Fund’s European Department, and I had been Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department. Although our responsibilities had been somewhat different and we often had dealt in different geographic and economic areas, our work had occasionally converged, especially when it was focused on transition countries, mainly during the 1990s. The transition countries, and the difficulties that they were encountering, had been areas of work where Oleh had unsurpassed knowledge. After I left the IMF, we had met at the Annual Conferences organized by the Central Bank of Croatia, in the splendid, historical city of Dubrovnik. Oleh had been a member of the Scientific Committee that planned those conferences. During those gatherings, I discovered one of the professional interests of Oleh—history and historical developments. I discovered that he had done deep, historical research on the important role that Ragusa (the historical name of Dubrovnik) had played in the past, especially as it related to the powerful Republic of Venice. Oleh was a warm and pleasant person and a first-rate economist with deep appreciation of reality. He had always his feet firmly on the ground and had little patience for arm-chair theorizing. He was both a true gentleman and a true scholar. He had strong economic background, having received his PhD from MIT and having been a prolific writer. He had authored several well-received books and articles. Of particular interest was his book History, Politics and Personalities in Post-Communist Countries. As the title of that book indicates, his interests extended beyond economics and included history and politics. His knowledge of post-communist countries, including Russia and his own country, Ukraine, which, fo
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