Edna Ehrlich Collection: Personal Life, Professional Work and Music Interests

Edna E. Ehrlich was born on January 8, 1919, to Pauline Gottesman née Hellman and Herman I. Gottesman in Beacon, New York. Ehrlich attended Brooklyn College and received her Bachelor of Arts in 1943 and her Master of Arts at Columbia University in 1944, both in economics. She married Otto Ehrlich, an Austrian Jew who fled to the United States, in 1949. She received her doctorate in 1960 from the New School for Social Research and her dissertation, The Role of Banking in Japan's Economic Development, won the New School Graduate Faculty Award.

Ehrlich began working at the Federal Reserve as a staff economist in 1944 and after a series of promotions was named the chief of the Balance of Payments Division in 1962. In 1968, she was promoted to Senior Economist of the Research and Statistics Function, the second woman in the history of the Federal Reserve to be promoted to that office. From 1972-1978 she was the Manager of the International Research Department. She was named International Advisor in the Research and Statistics area in 1978. Ehrlich retired in 1987.

In addition to her work at the Federal Reserve, Ehrlich also served as a consultant to the United Nations in the 1950s on fiscal policies in Asia. During the summers from 1963-1965 Ehrlich and her husband lectured in West Germany on the US balance of payments and international financial problems sponsored by the United States Information Service. From 1985-1986, Ehrlich took a leave of absence from the Federal Reserve to serve as a consultant for the International Monetary Fund on a balance of payments study. Ehrlich also taught as an adjunct professor at both New York University and Columbia University and wrote a number of articles for the Federal Reserve journals, the Monthly Review and the Quarterly Review, as well as outside publications.

Ehrlich also served on a number of professional organizations, including the Women's Economic Roundtable as the Director from 1984-1990, the American Committee on Asian Economic Studies as the Director for Corporate Relations and Public Affairs from 1988 to the early 2000s, the Downtown Economists Club as president from 1978-1980, and the Metropolitan Economics Association as president from 1970-1971. After her retirement, Ehrlich founded her own consulting firm, Ehrlich International Consulting. As a consultant, she conducted interviews with officials in major banks, lectured, wrote articles, and participated in conferences and panels.

Ehrlich also founded the East-West Music Exchange Association in 1996 with Chinese composer Jin Xiang and was its Vice President and Executive Secretary. Ehrlich remained active in the eastern music and economics communities until her death on March 11, 2015.