Yep, There's Another One

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Speed up, urges Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.

Slow down, advises Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.

A small army of Americans is rushing to help the Russian economy. Some are samaritans; some are charlatans. Many are looking to make a quick buck; others are searching for adventure. There are even two people named Dr. Jeffrey Sachs. Harvard's Jeffrey D. Sachs, 37, is better known. But there is also Jeffrey A. Sachs, 38, a dentist who was once a social-policy adviser to New York Governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo. Jeffrey A. runs Ecolink, a New York City-based project that is trying to show the Russians how to use public finance to build an AIDS hospital in Moscow and grain-storage facilities.

The presence of Jeffrey A. and Jeffrey D. on the same turf causes both confusion and irritation. The Boston Globe in June published an op-ed piece by Jeffrey A. that Jeffrey D.'s Cambridge colleagues thought he had written. The paper later had to print a clarification. Officials at the Institute of USA and Canada Studies in Moscow have taken to calling them Jeffrey I and Jeffrey II.

The two have diametrically opposed views of how to cure the Russian economy. While the economist draws on his experience in Bolivia and Poland to urge radical reforms, the dentist draws on his work on New York City welfare programs to say the Russians must go slow.

New York's Jeffrey is bemused by the nominal confusion, saying it's "an annoyance more than a real problem." Harvard's Jeffrey, though, is not laughing. He says this has become a sideshow that distracts from serious matters at hand.