Eswar Prasad

Eswar Prasad is a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution, where he holds the New Century Chair in International Economics. He is also the Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy and a professor of economics at Cornell University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was previously chief of the Financial Studies Division in the International Monetary Fund’s Research Department and, before that, was the head of the IMF’s China Division.

Prasad’s latest book, “The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance” (Harvard University Press, 2021), was listed among the best economics and finance books of the year by The Economist, Financial Times, and Foreign Affairs. He is also the author of “Gaining Currency: The Rise of the Renminbi” (Oxford, 2016) and “The Dollar Trap: How the U.S. Dollar Tightened Its Grip on Global Finance” (Princeton, 2014). His extensive publication record includes articles in top academic journals in economics and finance as well as numerous collected volumes. He has co-authored and edited numerous other books and monographs, including on financial regulation and on China and India.

Prasad has testified before the Senate Finance Committee, the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, and his research on China has been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record. He is the creator of the Brookings-Financial Times world index (TIGER: Tracking Indexes for the Global Economic Recovery). His essays and op-eds have appeared in Barron’s, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, MIT Technology Review, New York Times, Project Syndicate, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. He has made frequent appearances on BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox, NBC, NPR, PBS, Reuters, and other radio and television channels.

Prasad is also a research fellow at IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn). He has served as the co-editor of the journal IMF Staff Papers, was on the editorial board of Finance & Development, and was the founding editor of the quarterly IMF Research Bulletin.

View his personal website.