Carmen Reinhart Appointed as World Bank Group Chief Economist

WASHINGTON, May 20, 2020—World Bank Group President David Malpass today announced that Carmen Reinhart has been appointed as the new Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank Group.

“I am very pleased to welcome Carmen to the World Bank Group as we boost our efforts to restore growth and meet the urgent debt and recession crises facing many of our client countries,” said Malpass. “Carmen has dedicated her career to understanding and surmounting financial crises in both advanced and developing economies in order to achieve growth and higher living standards. Her thought leadership during this unprecedented period will be invaluable to the Bank Group and our clients.”

An American economist with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Reinhart is currently the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, she was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland.

“Carmen Reinhart will be an excellent addition to the World Bank’s strong leadership team,” said Mari Pangestu, Managing Director of Development Policy and Partnerships. “Carmen has the demonstrated ability to leverage research for impact. I am confident she will help us bring quality programs and outcomes for our client countries, where so many are being hard-hit by the ongoing crisis.”

Reinhart’s areas of expertise are international capital flows, finance, and macroeconomics, and she has published extensively on economies in Asia and Latin America, banking and sovereign debt crises, currency crashes, and contagion. She is an advisor and contributor to the ongoing World Bank debt transparency discussions and a member of the external advisory group created by the IMF to provide input on policy challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic and its economic impact.

Carmen was Senior Policy Advisor and Deputy Director at the IMF and Vice President and Chief Economist of the investment bank Bear Stearns.  She serves on the Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was a member of the Congressional Budget Office Panel of Economic Advisors.

Ranked among the top Economists worldwide based on publications and scholarly citations, Reinhart has been listed among Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 in Finance, Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, and Thomson Reuters’ The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.  In 2018 she was awarded the King Juan Carlos Prize in Economics and NABE’s Adam Smith Award, among others.

Reinhart’s appointment is effective on June 15, 2020.