Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas named as new Chief Economist of IMF, succeeds Gita Gopinath

IMF Chief Economist 2022: The International Monetary Fund announced on January 11, 2022, that it has appointed Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas as its next Chief Economist. A French-born University of California- Berkley Economist will replace Gita Gopinath as the IMF’s Chief Economist who will be joining the IMF management team in January 2022.

The International Monetary Fund further added that Gourinchas will start part-time as the Chief Economist of IMF from January 24 and will transition to full-time work on April 1, 2022. As an Economic Counsellor, Gourinchas will also serve as the Director of IMF’s Research Department.

Congrats @pogourinchas, our new Economic Counsellor & Director of Research! W/ a stellar track record of scholarship, under yr leadership, we'll build on the IMF’s reputation for excellence in macroeconomics & research in service to our global membership https://t.co/UrUungsg78

— Kristalina Georgieva (@KGeorgieva) January 10, 2022

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas: Know everything about IMF’s new Chief Economist

1. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, a French National, is a graduate in Physics from the Ecole Polytechnique. He holds a master’s degree in Economics from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

2. The new Chief Economist of IMF also holds an Engineering MA from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees.

3. After completing his Master’s from France, Gourinchas moved to the United States in 1996 to pursue his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

4. From 1998, he began teaching at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Princeton University and continued it till 2003.

5. Later, Gourinchas joined the Economics Department of the University of California at Berkley as an Assistant Professor and he has been associated with the varsity for almost 15 years. Currently, he is the faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Clausen Centre for International Business.

6. From 2012 to 2013, he had worked with the Prime Minister of France as part of the Council of Economic Advisors.

7. In his remarkable career as an Economist, Gourinchas has been honoured with many awards and recognition. It includes the Bernacer Prize for the Best European Economist under 40 working in the field of macroeconomics and finance in 2007.

Association with IMF

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, while working as a faculty at the University of California, started working as a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2009. He also became the editor of the fund’s premier research journal, the IMF Economic Review.

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas is credited for increasing the reach of the magazine among a wider base of economic policymakers and the community. He was associated with Fund in this role till 2016.

IMF Chief Economist List

Gita Gopinath as First Deputy Managing Director of IMF

The former and the first woman Chief Economist of IMF Gita Gopinath will join her new position as the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund in January 2022.

Her appointment as IMF’s second-ranking official was announced because of her wide-ranging policy role overseeing IMF surveillance activities, flagship, and research. Gopinath will replace Geoffrey Okamoto as the First Deputy Managing Director. He was a former Trump administration U.S. Treasury Official.