The IMF's head economist, Gita Gopinath, will leave the organisation and return to Harvard University.
The IMF's head economist, Gita Gopinath, will leave the organisation and return to Harvard University.
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According to the International Monetary Fund, Chief Economist Gita Gopinath will quit her position in January of next year and return to Harvard University.

The 49-year-old well-known Indian-American economist was appointed Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund in January 2019. (IMF). She was the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Economics at Harvard University at the time she joined the Washington-based global lender.

The search for Gopinath’s successor will begin soon, according to IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.

Gita’s contribution to the Fund and our membership, according to Georgieva, has been genuinely extraordinary, and she has had a significant impact on the IMF’s operations.

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Gopinath, who was born in Mysuru, is the IMF’s first female Chief Economist. Harvard University granted her a one-year leave of absence on an extraordinary basis, allowing her to work as the IMF’s Chief Economist for three years.

As the Fund’s first female Chief Economist, she made history, and her quick intellect and profound knowledge of international finance and macroeconomics were invaluable as we navigated through the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

For spearheading analytically rigorous work and policy-relevant projects with significant effect and influence, Gita earned the respect and admiration of colleagues in the Research Department across the Fund, as well as beyond the membership, Georgieva added. According to the IMF, Gopinath co-authored the Pandemic Paper on how to end the COVID-19 pandemic, which established widely accepted targets for vaccination the world, as one of her numerous key achievements.

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The Multilateral Task Force, led by the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the World Health Organization, was formed to help end the pandemic, and a working group with vaccine manufacturers was formed to identify trade barriers, supply bottlenecks, and accelerate vaccine delivery to low- and lower-middle-income countries, according to the IMF.

Among her other notable achievements, Gopinath assisted in the formation of an IMF Climate Change team to study, among other things, the most effective climate mitigation programmes.

I’d want to thank Gita for her outstanding contributions, always sensible advise, devotion to the Research Department’s and the Fund’s missions in general, as well as her widely recognised inclusive and accessible approach to colleagues and staff, Georgieva said.

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Gopinath was born in December 1971 in Kolkata to Malayalee parents and attended Lady Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi for her education. She graduated from both the Delhi School of Economics and the University of Washington with a master’s degree.

Kenneth Rogoff, Ben Bernanke, and Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas mentored Gopinath as she completed her PhD in economics from Princeton University in 2001. She started as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago in 2001 and moved to Harvard in 2005. In 2010, she was promoted to tenured professor. She is only the third woman to hold a tenured seat in Harvard’s prestigious economics department, and the first Indian to do so since Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen.

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