Intro by Kay Alvito:

Good morning everyone, I'm Kay, John's granddaughter. My grandfather, Vô John, as we call him, was a very adventurous man. I've only known him for fifteen years, yet for most of those I saw him hike and climb with incredible zest for life and a love for nature I aspire to have. I turned six by his side watching the sunrise in Machu Picchu, which was an extraordinary experience that will forever live in my memory of him. In fact, most of my memories of him, exempting a few of him calling my cat Kit Kat or smiling at me from across the dinner table, are in nature: on the beach in Chincoteague, a boat in the Amazon, or a trail in the forest, holding his binoculars up when my mom or I ask what species a bird is. I believe he has been a blessing in the lives of all who knew him. A happy, serious man, and we are all lucky to have met him. Now, I will read the words of his sister Wyn, who unfortunately, because of the COVID-19 travel restrictions from the U.K. to the U.S, could not be here today.

Words by Wyn:

We were a family of six children, John being the second eldest and myself being the youngest. The first two, including John, grew up during World War II, the rest of us came later or don't remember the war.

Our father was a nurseryman and our mother, whilst not doing paid work, was always busy at work looking after the home and family. Both were lay Methodist preachers in the countryside near our home. During the war, Dad had to grow tomatoes. He was prohibited from growing roses.

I was only 9 years old when John, aged 18, left home to go to university to study economics, so I hold very few distinct memories of him in those days when we were all together at home. But rather, I have an impression of how it was to live as part of our large family—the fun, the fights, the chaos, the plotting, the teasing, the sharing and all within a wonderful sense of safety and being loved.

John, like his elder sister Ruth, was very bright and always did well in his studies at school. I don’t remember complaints about detentions and being made to stay behind after class with either Ruth or John, unlike the next four of us where these were regular events. We were a completely different kettle of fish altogether and were far more likely to be found climbing trees or building dens than sitting quietly with a book in front of us.

The house was always bustling with activity which seemed to happily accommodate all the neighbourhood children as well as our own family. Mum seemed to always be busy either cheerfully preparing the next meal or clearing up from the last.

Meal times were always at set times no matter what else was happening and we were all expected to appear to the minute at the appointed times.

Breakfast was at 8.00am when Dad would come in from work on the nursery for his porridge—always porridge. Children would arrive downstairs in various stages of dress and we would fill up our bowls with our favourite cereal. Mum would keep disappearing to call up the stairs the names of the children who hadn’t appeared yet….John, it has to be said, was never one of those! Time for the school bus. All bowls were dropped on the table and a rush for the door trailing satchels and ties and coats as we all ran out.

Dinner time was 1.00pm—prompt—even at weekends and holidays. Not 1.05pm which would bring a ‘tut, tut’ from Mum for being late.

It was the main meal of the day. Dad would come in from the nursery and sit at the head of the table. We were expected to behave well. If Dad saw anyone with their elbows on the table he would get up and bang our elbow onto the table. I don’t believe John got many fuzzy feelings in his elbows but I was certainly familiar with that uncomfortable sensation.

Sundays we always had a roast. I think this was where John learnt that lifelong skill which I have been fortunate enough to experience myself on several occasions, of cooking and carving and serving a delicious lamb roast.

6.00pm was tea time, the end of the working day for dad when he came in from the land in time to listen to the 6.00 o’clock news.

John always showed an interest in that too which amazed me as a 6 year old child because it was SO boring. He became interested in politics at quite a young age, getting to the delivery spot on our road early to read the neighbour's papers as well as our own, the Guardian, his lifelong favorite.

At that age he was already a passionate supporter of what was then called the Liberal Party. I remember him telling me about how “classy” Liberal prime ministers like Gladstone were. Hardly a subject that a 6 or 7 year old was likely to get excited about!

I remember him getting very involved in the general election when Robin Day was standing as the liberal candidate in our hometown of Hereford. He was out all day canvassing and supporting and assisting Robin Day at his meetings. Sadly, Robin lost.

I remember as adults John was once telling me that he never felt he had achieved those things which he had really wanted to achieve in his life. When I asked what they were he replied “to be leader of the Liberal Party……….. and maybe Prime Minister!” I laughed and said I was sorry he’d never fulfilled his life’s ambitions because I had achieved mine: to be a wife and a mother!

Mum was always telling us tales of when we were very little. One of the stories she told about John was this. When John’s bowl of porridge was put before him each morning it was never quite the right temperature for him. He would say "my porridge is too hot” so mum would pour a little cold milk on it. The next day the complaint would be that it was too cold so mum would mix some boiling water into it. One day when she had put the porridge in front of him she stood with a jug of cold milk in one hand and the kettle in the other and asked “How is it today?” John looked up at her and said “It’s just right!“

There were quite a few pets and animals around when we were children—a dog who always had her puppies in the shoe cupboard, some chickens, a cow and a cat which John strongly disliked because cats kill birds.

There were two other things which John hated: spiders and custard. What wonderful ammunition this was for Peter, his younger brother, who never tired of teasing John and asking him if he’d like some delicious custard on his pudding.

I remember being with Pete on holiday as adults (John would already be married with a family of three) when Pete spotted in a toy shop an enormous, hairy spider which could be catapulted through the air. Without hesitation he snatched it up with glee ready for John’s Christmas present because, Pete assured me, he’d never given John a flying spider before! Poor John. He must have been at least 60 at the time.

John was the only child that I can remember who really took care of his own patch of garden. I can see it in my mind’s eye now: a small patch outside the kitchen window. I can’t honestly say that I can remember anything much growing in it but I do know it was regularly tended and dug.

He loved nature from being a young boy and he particularly loved birds as I’m sure everyone here will be aware.

He became a keen birdwatcher from the age of 10, when dad took him to Sugarloaf Mountain in Hereford to watch birds for the first time. And he kept endless records of the names of the birds he’d seen, in which places, and on which dates. Over a lifetime he managed to see 4000 species over his travels to some 104 nations.

Birds were the inspiration for the only poem he ever wrote. It went like this:

"Caw, caw said the rook by the babbling of the brook.

By the babbling of the brook. Caw, caw said the rook."

John always had a pair of binoculars hung about his neck and, in my memory, always seemed to be dressed in green and brown and was always setting off on, or returning from, a birdwatching walk in the hills.

It was in my adult life when, adult to adult, I was able to truly get to know and understand and love my gentle, kind, moral and honourable big brother. I really cherished the times we spent together particularly on walks when he was able to identify every bird we could hear or see.

It was no surprise when I was told that his final wish was for his ashes to blow free on the beautiful hills of the Black Mountains around his childhood homeland where he had first discovered the joys of birdwatching.

I’m so sorry not to be with you all. I will be with you in spirit as you talk and laugh and remember my precious brother. — Wyn Jones

Daniel Williamson

Brian Pinto

Thank you, Denise, Theresa and the Williamson Family, for inviting me to say a few words about my friend John at this beautiful memorial.

Every economist of my generation knew who John was. We met for the first time in 1994, when John invited me to present some work I had done on Poland in his Brown Bag seminar series at the then Institute for International Economics. We met again several years later when John was a discussant on a paper I presented to the Brookings Panel on Russia’s 1998 economic crisis.

But we would never have become friends had it not been for that fateful trip to Pakistan. In January 2002, my manager at the World Bank asked me to travel with John to Pakistan and help him write a report on the country’s development policies. Of course, only a Pakistani manager could have asked me to do this because I’m from India! I pleaded with Zia Qureshi to spare me that mission because tensions were sky-high between India and Pakistan at the time. Just a couple of weeks earlier, terrorists from Pakistan had attacked India’s parliament and most major airlines had suspended flights to Pakistan. But Zia laughed off my concerns and said, “Things will go fine. Besides, John is really keen on working with you.”

It was incredibly tense when John and I got to Pakistan. The newspaper headlines were invariably about India and there was a huge banner in front of the parliament building in Islamabad, proclaiming: “India: State Sponsor of Terrorism”. But there was a comforting familiarity to the place. I understood the Urdu commonly spoken because it was similar to the Hindustani I had grown up with in India until the drive to sanskritize Hindi in the 1960s. And it was great fun being there with John, whom I found to be a friendly, unassuming person, very observant and full of witty conversation.

One of our first meetings was with an army general running the National Accountability Bureau. We found ourselves in a gigantic room with a long oval table. The general was seated at one end of the table and John and I were on opposite sides in the middle. They had our nameplates close to our assigned chairs. John’s name was spelt correctly but mine proclaimed “BRAIN PINTO”. This happened at several other meetings, which amused John no end. Thereafter, he always called me “Brain”, which I took as a sign of affection and affirmation.

At another meeting, an irate businessman stood up, banged the table and complained, “Because of bloody India, we have to pay all this war risk premium insurance on our shipments!” He was referring to the then prevailing tensions. John gave me a meaningful sidelong glance, barely suppressing a grin.

We then broke for tea. I was studiously avoiding the gentleman in question. But he sought me out and asked with a gracious flourish of his hand, “So Mr. Pinto, where are you from? Mexico or Brazil?” “Neither,” I replied, hoping the conversation would end there. But he persisted: “But then where are you from?” John said later that I should have fibbed, but I said that was impossible, because he was looking right at me. So I said, “I'm from the subcontinent.” At that point, he became a bit nervous. “From which part?” I leaned forward and whispered into his ear: “From the part you don’t like.” He apologized profusely and said, “Oh, please come back on a holiday, and you must bring bhabhee along the next time!” Bhabhee is the Hindi word for sister-in-law, the reference being to my wife. In other words, I was now his brother. His genuine warmth made me realize how similar we all are from the subcontinent, and what a great pity it was that these tensions persisted between our countries.

We also went on a road trip. John had brought his binoculars along and he told me to ask the driver to stop if there were any interesting birds to see. I conveyed John’s request to the driver. Eventually, we got to a hilly part of a dirt road and the driver stopped so that we could go to the top of the hill and look for birds. To my surprise, the driver asked me in a conspiratorial tone, “Can his heart handle a walk up the hill?” Nonplussed, I passed the question onto John, who broke into a guffaw. John told me that he had an artificial heart valve and that when he was going through his medical exam to join the World Bank, where he had spent a few years as the Chief Economist for South Asia, the doctor was at pains to underline that he should never be more than 150 miles from a major hospital. He then added with typical British irony, “Where did they think I would be when I was six miles up in the air on all those long-haul flights from the US to the subcontinent?” I was touched that he would share such a personal detail. A few years later, a friend was to have a heart valve replaced and I asked John if he would be willing to share his experience. He readily agreed.

We also had a memorable meeting with the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce. Sialkot is a prosperous commercial center where they make stainless-steel surgical instruments and most of the world’s soccer balls.

John and I were greeted with lavish Punjabi hospitality. With typical subcontinental attention to status—and guess whom we inherited that from—John’s garland as the head of the mission was much bigger than mine. Having grown up in India, I was familiar with garlanding etiquette, so I took off my garland in almost the same motion that it had been placed around my neck, and someone immediately took it away. But I was too far away from John to tell him what to do. So he wore his garland throughout the 45-minute meeting until we broke for lunch. Our hosts were too polite to ask him to take it off. The garland consisted of intertwined tendrils, roses and marigolds and had been sprayed with water. John’s jacket was quite wet and I thought he would be upset. But this didn’t bother him at all. Much more upsetting to John was the fact that a bland stew had been placed on a separate table for him replete with the finest English crockery and cutlery because of our hosts’ concern for the delicate British stomach. But John would have none of that and who could blame him? The buffet consisted of delicious biryanis, grilled meats and aromatic curries, much more to John’s liking than the stew our hosts had so considerately arranged for him. Before we left, we were each presented with a shield with the chamber’s logo. Once again, John’s was appropriately bigger than mine.

A few months after we returned from Pakistan, my wife, Nancy, and I were pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation from Denise and John for a “feijoada”. With his typical meticulousness, John had included a description of the cultural and historical origins of the Brazilian feijoada.

After returning home, I wrote John a thank you email. We economists are an unsentimental bunch. But Nancy insisted that I say something about the obvious love and warmth in the Williamson home and how nice it was to see the grandchildren’s toys everywhere. I was unsure how John would react, but I received a phone call from him the next day thanking me for my note. He then added: “I’m going to print it out and take it home. Denise will simply love the part about the love and the warmth and the children’s toys everywhere!”

Nancy had also admired John and Denise’s back garden. John told me that there was a cement patio there and he had to take a jackhammer to it so there could plant grass and flowers. One of the neighbors complained about the noise from the jackhammer. So the irrepressible, outspoken and lovely Denise put an end to the complaining by saying, “Do you think my husband is enjoying it?”

That was the start of a deeper friendship. I think what cemented it was that I lent John a copy of Salim Ali’s autobiography. Salim Ali is India’s most famous ornithologist ever. He wrote the 10-volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan together with Sidney Dillon Ripley, the distinguished American ornithologist who also served as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Quite by chance I had picked up a copy of Ali’s autobiography titled “The Fall of a Sparrow” in 1989 from the bookshop at Hornbill House in Mumbai, where the offices of the Bombay Natural History Society are located. I was told that the book was out of print and that I was buying the last available copy. John wrote me the following note on his personalized IIE letterhead: “With many thanks for the loan of this delightful book and best wishes for Christmas and 2003.”

We met regularly for lunch after that. John spoke about his older sister Kay Williamson on a few occasions. She was at least as distinguished in her field of linguistics as John was in his field. Kay was an authority on West African linguistics and had compiled the first Igbo-English dictionary. John was extremely fond of and proud of her. He told me that the two of them were the first ever from their family to go to college. It hurt him deeply when she fell seriously ill towards the end of her life and the British NHS made a fuss to treat her because she had spent so many years in Nigeria. I’m sure John Williamson, the distinguished British economist, was able to prevail on the NHS.

Our meetings became less frequent after I left the World Bank and moved to London. John contacted me on one of his visits to London in 2014. He was staying at the exclusive Reform Club on Pall Mall. The porter at the entrance informed me I would need to be wearing a tie, promptly fishing one out from a drawer behind him so that I would not be denied admittance! I had taken along a young colleague who was thrilled to meet the Father of the Washington Consensus. “Be careful,” John cautioned, “someone might ask who the mother is. In fact, my daughter refers to the consensus as her illegitimate sibling!”

It came as a shock to Nancy and me to read in the World Bank’s 1818 Bulletin for retirees that John had passed away on April 11 this year. I’d like to share a last story from that memorable visit to Pakistan. We were in Peshawar, in the northwest frontier province, close to the Khyber Pass. On our last evening there, we went to the bar at the Pearl Continental for a drink and then made our way to the rooftop restaurant with its sumptuous barbecue of chicken, lamb and beef. In general, vegetables in Pakistan seemed to be acknowledged only in passing. We finished dinner. The sun had set and it was a cool, refreshing evening. I looked at John and said, “So John, what do you think of life?” I then leaned back in my chair, looking forward to a long philosophical discourse. John emitted a short laugh, and retorted: “Life? Life is worth living!”

So John, here’s to a life well-lived, and may your soul soar with the birds of the air you loved so well, and may God protect Denise and your entire family!

And He will raise you up, On Eagle’s wings Bear you on the breath of dawn Make you to shine like the sun And hold you in the palm of his hand! From “On Eagle’s Wings” by Michael Joncas, 1977.

Colin Bradford

I have been agonized by the irony of the man and the economist that we know as John Williamson, and the caricature of him that is derived from the thing that made him most famous, which was the Washington Consensus.

Stanley Fisher went to the trouble of counting up John's publications and found that 60% of them, had to do with exchange rates, and only 10% had to do with the Washington Consensus.

But the trouble is that for the great public out there beyond this set of people, the name of John Williamson if its known is known for the Washington Consensus, that in the hands of others was made into a doctrine and dogma of market fundamentalism, with which John would not have agreed. Although he was foundationally, rigorously, honing in on the power of the market to create dynamism.

And it was made into a binary, which was the exact opposite, as Avinash has pointed out, of where John was situated, which is in the intermediate zone between the State and the market, between the floating and fixed exchange rate.

I was recalling this morning the currency board debate which was unnecessary after John's work, which made clear what he did in his exchange rate work, as I see it in the rearview mirror—which was to expand policy space and to expand choice, rather than narrow it into an either-or decision-making.

So I am hopeful that John will be remembered for the man he was and the economist that he actually achieved to become. And I join Avinash in the very strong feeling and hope that he will be remembered and currently seen, as a man for this moment, when polarized debates are so powerful.

Arvind Subramanian

Nancy Birdsall

Evan Williamson introduces "Off the Ground"

From Marcus Miller:

John Williamson: some happy memories from Marcus Miller (who was appointed to the position John held at Warwick University when he left for Brazil).

In a famous sonnet, Shakespeare asks: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? I would like to pose a similar question: what literary figures does John remind you of? Three come to mind.

First there is the level-headed English monk in Umberto Ecco’s In the name of a Rose - played by Sean Connery in the movie - who somehow manages to figure out what’s going on in the torturous religious conflicts of Medieval Italy – as John was able to do for complicated disputes in economics!

Second is the reliable captain of a sailing boat in Arthur Ransom’s adventure books about the Swallows and Amazons - books that John knew ever so well and remembered with evident pleasure. (The captain of the ‘Swallow’ also happened to be called John.)

Finally there is a very famous naturalist - first name is Charles - who travelled the world in search of the Origin of the Species and paid special attention to the behaviour of birds in the process - as did John since, as a youth, he saw a flight of birds taking off in Yorkshire. He recently sent me this early recollection :

We were at Flambro Head ringing Goldcrests when a friend said, "Look skywards." And there were four Common Cranes. That was my first real experience birding.

________________________________

As you all know John was a faithful and caring husband to Denise and a proud and loving father to Daniel, Andre and Theresa. It was my good fortune to be adopted as an overseas member of the family being invited to stay at 3919 Oliver Street on many working visits to Washington. (Thank you ever so much Denise for making me one of your extended family!)

On these visits I would try to make myself useful by taking the dog for a walk or helping John to sweep up tree leaves in the Fall at the side and out front. But, when John retreated up into his office at the top of the house, I would typically scoot off to exercise classes near Dupont circle - or to some tango session around DC, creeping back late at night with my own key to the front door so I wouldn’t wake everybody!

I could never persuade John to come on these jaunts: but then he could never persuade me to get up at the crack of dawn to join in a census of the local bird population!

________________________________

John made frequent visits to Britain to see family and friends and was a welcome visiting lecturer for economics students at Warwick University where he had once been a professor. He would sometimes come and stay with me on these trips and we would go to local beauty spots, like Ryton Pool and Draycote Water. He would see what birds were in residence and try to help me recognize some by imitating their songs. (One was ‘bring a bit of bread and cheese’ if I remember right; but I will spare you the musical version!)

So when I hear the Tweet of the Day on BBC Radio, it brings back happy memories of these nature lessons with John and his feathered friends.

In Memory of John Williamson by Liqing Zhang

The first time I met with John was in the March of 1995 when I was a visiting scholar in Economic Development Institute at the World Bank. The purpose of my staying in EDI was to develop a training course about “currency convertibility in developing countries”. After reading the book “Currency Convertibility in Eastern Europe”, I decided to visit John for having his insights in more details. Thanks to the introduction by Dr. Jun Ma who was a consultant in the Bank then, I eventually went to the Institute for International Economics (IIE) for the first time and had a memorable meeting with him. I clearly remembered that John talked quite a lot about the experiences of capital account liberalization in Latin American and East European countries and strongly recommended Chile’s Unremunerated Reserve Requirement (URR) system. I was very much impressed by his saying that “entire capital account convertibility is a luxury goods for many emerging market economies”.

In the beginning of the new century, the reform of China’s exchange rate regime became a highly controversial and worldwide concerned policy issue. On October 29-30, 2003, John visited my university (Central University of Finance and Economics, CUFE) for the first time and gave a keynote speech at the seminar “RMB Exchange Rate and Global Monetary System”. At the outset of the seminar, a ceremony was held for welcoming John to be honorary professor in CUFE. During his two-day staying in Beijing, I arranged some meetings for John to talk with senior officials in People’s Bank of China and State Administration of Foreign Exchange for discussing the possibility of appreciation of Chinese currency. All the meetings were productive and should be considered as valuable communication between the policy makers in China and United States.

On September 7-8 of 2004, John was invited to CUFE again and gave a keynote speech in the international conference “Reform of Exchange Rate Regime: International Experience and China’s Selection”. After making a historical overview of the exchange rate regimes since World War Two, John convincingly explained the importance of keeping a competitive exchange rate for emerging market economies by choosing the intermediate exchange rate regime, i.e. BBC, his most favorite invention, and suggested China adopt a more flexible regime so as to avoid undervaluation. The conference was joined by high level Chinese financial officials and many foreign experts, including those from IMF, Japan and UK, and presumably played an important role in China’s exchange rate reform in the following years.

Thanks to John’s invitation, I spent eight months in PIIE as a Fulbright visiting fellow since September 2004 till May 2005. Nearly every week, John would squeeze about one hour in his very tight schedule to meet with me in his office. We discussed various issues, including global imbalance, capital flows and financial instability in emerging market economies, policy reforms in transitional economies (Washington Consensus), China’s exchange rate reform and capital account liberalization and etc.. What impressed me most was that in his study of all these issues, John always demonstrated a firm belief in the market economy while never ignoring the appropriate role that government should play. He firmly believed that trade, FDI inflows and domestic financial market should be liberalized while strongly against liberalization of capital accounts and free floating of exchange rate regime in early stages of economic development. He disliked direct government subsidies for industry but firmly advocating that government spending should be more focused on education, health care and assistance to the poor.

As an internationally renowned development economist, John had been keeping a close eye on China’s economic reform. And it certainly became a frequently discussed issue between us. Once when I asked him how to explain China’s rapid economic growth, he seriously replied that China should be considered as a successful case of Washington Consensus (certainly the original version, he emphasized), then he added that China did have some extra good practices in its gradual economic transition, for instance, the pilot-scheme of policy reform. He said it could be listed as the eleventh suggestion in a new version of Washington Consensus.

In the December 2005, after I finished my visit in PIIE and Columbia University and returned to China, John was invited to CUFE giving some lectures to our PHD students. As usual, I arranged several meetings for John so as to let him directly talk to the senior officials from China’s top financial regulators, including vice minister of finance and vice governor of central bank. John also did an interview by the chief editor of China Finance, a very influential financial magazine in China. The main points he made in the interview included: (1) the original meaning of Washington Consensus that he coined was neither the same with the policy suggestions to emerging market economies proposed by IMF and World Bank nor the same with the explanation by Joe Stiglitz; (2) China should adopt intermediate exchange rate regime, such as pegging to a currency basket; (3) China should avoid a rapid liberalization of capital account before it has a healthier banking sector; (4) For dealing with enormous twin surplus, China should allow its currency appreciating and encourage private consumption by building up a sophistic social security net.

In the following years until 2011, John came to CUFE several times for lectures and conferences. The topics were ranging from “History of Global Imbalance”, “The Impact of Financial Crisis on the Economic Development Thinking”, to “SDR-linked Bond Issuance in Developing Countries”. On March 18-19, John joined the international conference on “Reforming the Global Monetary System” organized by Initiative Policy Dialogue with Columbia University and CUFE. His defense of internationally negotiated reserve currency (similar to SDR) was very impressive and insightful.

There is no any doubt that John was one of the greatest international economists in his generation. As a brilliant giant and mentor in global economics society, John had a formidable intellect. He was extremely creative, having enormous academic inventions ranging from intermediate exchange rate regime, reform of international monetary system, debt relief, to policy reform in emerging market economies. Importantly, most of his policy suggestions drawn from these inventions have been greatly beneficial to the economic growth, institutional transition and financial stability in developing and emerging market world. Certainly, China is among the beneficiary.

As an individual, John was a kind person with marvelous sense of humor. He had a warm family and many friends. He was a birdwatcher and conservationist, having seen over 4000 species of birds throughout his life and supported innumerable causes.

In nearly three decades, it was my great honor to keep contact with John and learn from him. I am proud of being his student and friend. My memory of him will last forever.

(written for the event of “In Loving Memory of John Williamson 1937-2021” on November 7, 2021, by Liqing Zhang, professor of economics at Central University of Finance and Economics and visiting fellow in PIIE during September 2004-May 2005)