Gita Gopinath Leaving IMF at End-August to Return to Harvard

Gopinath joined the Fund in January 2019 as Chief Economist and was promoted to First Deputy Managing Director in January 2022.

Gopinath, the first female Chief Economist in IMF history, has a rare combination of brilliance and humility, which we have all come to admire, said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.

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, IMF said.

“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 said.

She also co-authored the Pandemic Plan on how to end the COVID19 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.

“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 said.