Harold van Buren Cleveland

Harold van Buren Cleveland, an international economist and author.

Cleveland had a career in foreign affairs, notably with the Department of State, before leaving the Government. He retired in 1985 after 20 years at First National City Bank of New York, later Citibank, where he was a vice president and chief international economist.

A native of Cincinnati, he graduated from Harvard University in 1938 and from its law school in 1942, when he joined the War Production Board as an industrial specialist. After the war he and Ben T. Moore, as members of the State Department's economic bureau, wrote a report outlining a program for the economic revival of Europe.

Their study and a parallel one from the department's policy planning staff were submitted to Gen. George C. Marshall, the Secretary of State, who used them to shape what became known as the Marshall Plan. Formally called the European Recovery Program, it was proposed by General Marshall in 1947.

Mr. Cleveland helped carry it out as a deputy director in the European division of the Economic Cooperation Administration. He returned to Washington as an economist for the Committee for Economic Development in the early 1950's.

He was later counsel for the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company in Boston and director of Atlantic Policy Studies for the Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan. He joined Citibank in 1965.

Cleveland was the author and co-author of many books and articles, including "The Atlantic Idea and Its European Rivals" (1966, McGraw-Hill for the Council on Foreign Relations), and a history of Citibank.