Gita Gopinath to leave IMF, rejoin Harvard

Gita Gopinath, first deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will be leaving the institution to return to Harvard University.

Gopinath, who had joined the IMF in January 2019 as chief economist and was promoted to first deputy managing director in January 2022, will leave the organisation at the end of August, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said.

“Gita has been an outstanding colleague — an exceptional intellectual leader, dedicated to the mission and members of the fund, and a fabulous manager, always showing genuine care for the professional standing and wellbeing of our staff,” Georgieva said.

“She came to the Fund as a highly respected academic in macroeconomics and international finance. Admiration for Gita only grew through her time at the Fund, where her analytical rigor was paired with practical policy advice to the membership during an especially challenging period, which included the pandemic, wars, the cost-of-living crisis, and major shifts in the global trading system,” she added.

Gita is credited with steering the Fund’s analytical and policy work with clarity, striving for the highest standards of rigorous analysis at a complex time of high uncertainty and rapidly changing global economic environment. She oversaw the Fund’s multilateral surveillance and analytical work on fiscal and monetary policy, debt, and international trade.

“Gita made a strong contribution to systemic country surveillance and to Fund country programs, including those for Argentina and Ukraine. As a key member of my senior leadership team, Gita represented the Fund with integrity and fortitude in many international fora, notably the G-7 and G-20,” Georgieva said.

First female chief economist

She also said that Gopinath — the first female chief economist in IMF history — has a rare combination of brilliance and humility, which we have all come to admire.

“As chief economist, Gita ensured that the World Economic Outlook remained the preeminent report on the global economy — an especially impressive achievement during the Covid-19 pandemic which presented an unprecedented challenge to our membership. Gita also spearheaded the Fund’s work on the Integrated Policy Framework (IPF), which provides a robust analytical framework to help countries determine the appropriate policies for macroeconomic and financial stability. She also co-authored the Pandemic Plan on how to end the Covid 19 crisis — a landmark intellectual contribution which has widely been hailed as filling an important global gap by setting targets to vaccinate the world at feasible cost.”

On her departure, Gopinath said: “I am truly grateful for my time at the IMF, first as Chief Economist and then as First Deputy Managing Director. I have had the privilege of working closely with the IMF’s brilliant and committed staff, colleagues in management, the executive board, and country authorities. I am especially thankful to Kristalina and her predecessor, Christine Lagarde, for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to serve the IMF’s membership during a period of unprecedented challenges. I now return to my roots in academia, where I look forward to continuing to push the research frontier in international finance and macroeconomics to address global challenges, and to training the next generation of economists.”

A successor to Gopinath is expected to be named in due course by Georgieva.

According to a Bloomberg report in October 2021, Gopinath intended to rejoin Harvard in January the following year.

“It has been an honor and a privilege to work with my incredibly dedicated staff colleagues and fund management and to make a contribution to helping the IMF’s 190 member countries recover from this crisis caused by the global pandemic,” she had then said. “I look forward to continuing to do so over the next several months before returning to Harvard in January.”

Harvard stint

Gopinath is the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and of Economics at Harvard University. 

She has taught in Harvard’s economics department since 2005. She holds a doctorate in economics from Princeton University, where Ben Bernanke was among her advisers before he became Federal Reserve chairman. Another adviser was Ken Rogoff, one of Gopinath’s predecessors as IMF chief economist.

Before coming to Harvard, she was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. She earned a B.A. from Lady Sri Ram College, and M.A. degrees from the Delhi School of Economics and the University of Washington.