Eswar Prasad

Eswar Prasad is a senior fellow in Economic Studies 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 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 Doom Loop: Why the World Economic Order Is Spiraling into Disorder,” (Basic Venture/Hachette, 2026), has been listed among the best books of 2026 (so far) by The Economist and Financial Times. His previous 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).

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.

View his personal website.