The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced July 21, that Gita Gopinath, First Deputy Managing Director (FDMD), would be leaving the Fund at the end of August to return to Harvard University. Gopinath was the first female Chief Economist in IMF history.
At Harvard, Gopinath will be the inaugural Gregory and Ania Coffey Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics, Harvard University said in its press release.
Gopinath joined the Fund in January 2019 as Chief Economist and was promoted to First Deputy Managing Director in January 2022.
The IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva is quoted saying, “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 added, “She (Gopinath) 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.”
Gopinath oversaw the Fund’s multilateral surveillance and analytical work on fiscal and monetary policy, debt, and international trade. She is credited by IMF of making a “a strong contribution to systemic country surveillance and to Fund country programs, including those for Argentina and Ukraine.”
Georgieva also praised Gopinath for her role in international forums like the G-7 and G-20, and for ensuring that the annual World Economic Outlook report “remained the preeminent report on the global economy”; spearheading the Fund’s work on the Integrated Policy Framework (IPF); co-authoring the Pandemic Plan on how to end the COVID19 crisis – especially important for laying out targets to vaccinate the world at a feasible cost.
“I am truly grateful for my time at the IMF, first as Chief Economist and then as First Deputy Managing Director, Gopinath said, praising her colleagues, and Georgieva
“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,” Gopinath added.
She first joined Harvard in 2005. She will begin with a new slate of course offerings next spring, Harvard said in its press release.
“I am the guilty one who raided Harvard University from one of their top talents, Gita Gopinath, a class-act economist, and a wonderful person, gracious, kind, elegant and of course extremely smart,” the Harvard press release quotes former IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, saying. Lagarde, who is now president of the European Central Bank, went on to say, “She (Gopinath) also proved a great leader at the IMF, a demanding institution, also full of smart economists.”
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