Throughout his three-year term as governor of the Reserve Bank of India, a central figure in the world’s third-largest economy, Dr. Raghuram Rajan both witnessed and helped shape the transformation of the global financial system. He now discusses the potential risks and rewards that face the major players in the global market—nations and corporations—and where the future of international economic policy is headed.
As the youngest chief economist and director of research to serve at the International Monetary Fund, Dr. Raghuram Rajan drew the attention of the world’s greatest bankers and financiers in 2005, when he delivered a prophetic warning to the Federal Reserve, in which he predicted the financial crisis that eventually struck in 2008. A distinguished economist with an intrinsic respect for the many risks that face the global market, Dr. Rajan explains how adopting sound and responsible policies will prevent the next great financial crisis.
In his Financial Times Business Book of the Year, «Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy» (2010), Dr. Rajan offered a prescient diagnosis of the economic and political consequences of growing inequality in industrial countries. He knows that the future need not be dark—opportunities and rewards await those with the patience and discipline to work for a better world. In his most recent book, «The Third Pillar: How the State and Markets are leaving Communities Behind forthcoming», Raghuram Rajan offers up a magnificent big-picture framework for understanding how these three forces–the state, markets, and our communities–interact, why things begin to break down, and how we can find our way back to a more secure and stable.
Raghuram’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance, and economic development, especially the role finance plays in it. His papers have been published in all the top economics and finance journals, and he has served on the editorial board of the American Economic Review and the Journal of Finance.
He is a senior advisor to BDT Capital, Booz and Co, and is on the international advisory board of Bank Itau-Unibanco. He is a director of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and on the Comptroller General of the United State’s Advisory Council.
Dr. Rajan is a member of the Group of Thirty. He is also President of the American Finance Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003, the American Finance Association awarded Raghuram the inaugural Fischer Black Prize, given every two years to the financial economist under age 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the theory and practice of finance.
