International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) first woman chief economist Gita Gopinath is set to quit in January after a three-year stint and return to academic life at Harvard, where she is a working professor. The fund thanked Gopinath for his work and said that he had already received an extraordinary one year leave from his university. The search for a successor of the IMF is about to begin soon.
He is credited with helping shape IMF policies to guide the world economy through the Covid crisis, which has been described by the fund as the worst since the Great Depression. A paper co-authored on how to end the pandemic was the basis for the goals set for immunizing the world. He also worked on a new analytical approach to help countries deal with global flows of capital. His earlier work on exchange rates first caught his attention, when the free-float conservatism of the Washington consensus needed challenging. The IMF used to frown on capital controls and currency intervention, but it is now better aligned with the finer idea that levers designed to reduce policy stereotyping may be needed to achieve multiple goals. Academia is where Gopinath really belongs.
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