Dragoslav Avramović (14 October 1919, in

Skopje Skopje ( , , ; mk, Скопје ; sq, Shkup) is the capital and largest city of North Macedonia. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre. The territory of Skopje has been inhabited since at least 4000 BC; r ...

– 26 February 2001, in

Rockville, Maryland Rockville is a city that serves as the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, and is part of the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. The 2020 census tabulated Rockville's population at 67,117, making it the fifth-largest community in ...

) was a Serbian

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

and the governor of the

National Bank of Yugoslavia The National Bank of Serbia ( sr, Народна банка Србије, Narodna banka Srbije) is the central bank of Serbia. Founded in 1884, the responsibilities of the bank are: monetary policy, sole issuer of Serbian banknotes and coins, ...

Biography

Born in 1919 in

where he finished high school in 1937. He graduated in 1941 in

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

Faculty of Law and obtained a PhD in 1956. He worked in the National Bank of Yugoslavia from 1951 to 1953. Avramović continued his career in the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...

where he stayed until 1977 and held a number of important positions. From 1980 to 1984, he held the position of the adviser to the secretary general of UN Conference for Trade and Development (

UNCTAD The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is an intergovernmental organization within the United Nations Secretariat that promotes the interests of developing countries in world trade. It was established in 1964 by the ...

). His last professional position (from 1984 to 1988) was that of an economic adviser in the Bank for Trade and Development in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

. He became widely known when in January 1994 his economic program stopped the

hyperinflation In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as t ...

in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav dinar got into 1:1 parity with the

Deutsche Mark The Deutsche Mark (; English: ''German mark''), abbreviated "DM" or "D-Mark" (), was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until the adoption of the euro in 2002. In English, it was ...

. From 2 March 1994 to 15 May 1996, he was the governor of the National Bank of Yugoslavia and the main coordinator of the national economic, social and financial program from 1995 to 1997. All of this brought him huge popularity and according to opinion polls he was the second most popular public figure in

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...

at the time. He resigned in the wake of massive demonstrations against the regime of

Slobodan Milošević Slobodan Milošević (, ; 20 August 1941 – 11 March 2006) was a Yugoslav and Serbian politician who was the president of Serbia within Yugoslavia from 1989 to 1997 (originally the Socialist Republic of Serbia, a constituent republic of ...

. In the late 1990s, he was one of the leaders of the opposition alliance ''Savez za promene''. Avramović became a corresponding member of the

Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts ( la, Academia Scientiarum et Artium Serbica, sr-Cyr, Српска академија наука и уметности, САНУ, Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, SANU) is a national academy and the ...

in 1994. He died in Rockville,

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

in 2001 and was soon afterwards buried in

External links

Biography (in Serbian)

''Glas javnosti''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Avramovic, Dragoslav 1919 births 2001 deaths Businesspeople from Skopje Serbs of North Macedonia 20th-century Serbian economists Serbian bankers Yugoslav economists World Bank people Governors of the National Bank of Yugoslavia Members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Yugoslav officials of the United Nations United Peasant Party politicians Burials at Belgrade New Cemetery