Raghuram Rajan

Raghuram Rajan’s background

He was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between 2013 and 2016, and also served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Bank for International Settlements between 2015 and 2016. Dr. Rajan was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund from 2003 to 2006.

Dr. Rajan’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance, and economic development, especially the role finance plays in it. He co-authored Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists with Luigi Zingales in 2003. He then wrote Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, for which he was awarded the Financial Times-Goldman Sachs prize for best business book in 2010. In 2017 he wrote I Do What I Do, a collection of speeches and essays written during his tenure as the Governor of Reserve.

He is a member of the Group of Thirty. He was the President of the American Finance Association in 2011 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Awards and accolades

• The American Finance Association inaugural Fischer Black Prize for the best finance researcher under the age of 40 in 2003
• The Infosys prize for the Economic Sciences in 2012
• The Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics in 2013
• Euromoney Central Banker Governor of the Year 2014
• Banker Magazine (FT Group) Central Bank Governor of the Year 2016

His expertise as an advisor enables him to work with many financial institutions, including Ita Unibanco Bank in Brazil, Booz and Co (a business consultancy), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and BDT Capital (a merchant bank). He also acts as Comptroller General of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and as a director of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Rajan has been featured in numerous prestigious publications, including The Economist, The Guardian and Foreign Policy Magazine. He has also contributed to numerous academic journals concerning economics.