Maurice Obstfeld

Maurice Obstfeld’s background

He is well known for his work in international economics. He is among the most influential economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc. He graduated from University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude, Cambridge and MIT, where received his Ph.D. in 1979. Director of the Center for International and Development Economic Research (CIDER). He joined Berkeley in 1989 as a professor, following appointments at Columbia (1979–1986) and the University of Pennsylvania (1986–1989). He was also a visiting professor at Harvard between 1989 and 1991.

Obstfeld serves as honorary advisor to the Bank of Japan’s Institute of Monetary and Economic Studies. Among Obstfeld’s honors are the Carroll Round Keynote Lecture, Woodward Lecture, and Bernhard Harms Prize and Lecture in 2004. Obstfeld is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is active as a research Fellow of CEPR, a research associate at NBER, and an International Research Fellow at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

On June 3, 2014, the White House announced that Obstfeld would join the Council of Economic Advisers as lead macroeconomist.

On July 20, 2015, Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), announced her intention to appoint Obstfeld as Economic Counsellor and Director of the IMF’s Research Department. Obstfeld succeeds Olivier Blanchard whose retirement was announced previously. He began his work at the Fund on September 8, 2015.

Books and selected publications

• Too Much Focus on the Yuan? (with Alan J. Auerbach),October 2010
• Lenders of Last Resort and Global Liquidity: Rethinking the System, Development Outreach (World Bank Institute), December 2009
• Globalization and Macroeconomics, Fall 2000.
• Money, Capital Mobility, and Trade: Essays in Honor of Robert Mundell, with Guillermo Calvo and Rudi Dornbusch.
• International Economics: Theory and Policy, with Paul Krugman and Marc Melitz
• Foundations of International Macroeconomics, with Kenneth Rogoff.