Raghuram Rajan

Raghuram Govind Rajan was the "Economic Counselor and Director of Research" (Chief Economist) at the International Monetary Fund from September 2003 until January 2007. He replaced Ken Rogoff at the IMF in September 2003. He was the youngest individual to hold the position (beginning at the age of 40).

In 2003, he was also the inaugural winner of the Fischer Black Prize awarded by the American Finance Association for outstanding original research in finance.

In early 2007 Rajan returned to the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago where he is the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance [http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2007/pr0734.htm] . With these credentials, at a young age, he is arguably the most prominent economist of Indian origin of his generation.

Background and education

Rajan was born in Bhopal (MP, India). In 1985, he graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, with a degree in Electrical Engineering, and then went on to earn an MBA at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 1987. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1991.

Rajan has also served as a visiting professor at MIT as well as at Northwestern University and the Stockholm School of Economics

Publications

His most widely-read book, "Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists", was co-authored with fellow Chicago GSB professor Luigi Zingales and published in 2004. He has also published papers in the "Journal of Financial Economics", "Journal of Finance" and "Oxford Review of Economic Policy".