Eswar Prasad

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Eswar Prasad
World Economic Forum on East Asia, 2012
Born1965 (age 58–59)
India
Alma materUniversity of Madras (B.A.)
Brown University (M.A.)
University of Chicago (Ph.D.)
OccupationEconomist
Known forAuthor of "The Dollar Trap", "Gaining Currency: The Rise of the Renminbi", "The Future of Money"
Websiteprasad.dyson.cornell.edu

Eswar Shanker Prasad (born 1965) is an Indian-American economist. He is the Tolani Senior Professor of International Trade Policy at Cornell University[1] and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he holds the New Century Chair in Economics.[2][3]

Early life and education[edit]

Prasad began his studies in economics at the University of Madras, where he graduated with a B.A. in 1985. He received his M.A. from Brown University in 1986 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992. He is married to Basia Kaminska. They have two children, Berenika Prasad, Yuvika Prasad, and their dog, Mozart.

Prasad is a former Chief of the Financial Studies Division at the International Monetary Fund’s Research Department and was also the head of the IMF’s China division.[4] He served as the co-editor of the journal IMF Staff Papers,[5] was on the editorial board of Finance & Development[6] and was the founding editor of the quarterly IMF Research Bulletin.[7] He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research[8] and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn.[9]

Prasad's research covers many areas including labor economics, business cycles, and open economy macroeconomics. He has testified before the United States Senate Committee on Finance[10] and the United States House Committee on Financial Services (both on China), and his research has been cited in the U.S. Congressional Record. He is now also one of the two Lead Academics for the India country programme at the International Growth Centre. His publication record includes articles in many collective volumes as well as academic journals such as the American Economic Review,[11] The Economic Journal,[12] the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Economic Perspectives,[13] the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Monetary Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics.

Economic views[edit]

In a series of papers written with Michael Keane in the early 2000s, Prasad argued that the Polish model of transition, which involved rapid liberalization of prices and opening to trade ("The Big Bang"), combined with very gradual privatization of state enterprises and a generous system of social transfers, led to both superior economic growth and less inequality than occurred in other former communist countries.[14]

In The Dollar Trap[15] (2014), Prasad examined the U.S. dollar's continuing dominance in the world economy following the global financial crisis. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he stated:

... it’s difficult to lay out a convincing scenario where the dollar is displaced any time in the foreseeable future as the dominant reserve currency. In international finance everything is relative. It’s not that the U.S. has especially good policies or growth prospects, it’s that the rest of the world looks weaker when it comes to putting together the powerful financial institutions that the U.S. has.... There are times, like during the debt-ceiling debate, when that trust is called into question. But the world has no other place to go, especially during times of global financial market turbulence or, paradoxically, even turbulence originating in the U.S.[16]

Prasad was asked in 2014 to comment on whether he believed President Barack Obama would impose harsher sanctions against Russia for their aggression against Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Prasad said harsher sanctions at this time were unlikely.[17]

In October 2016, Prasad published Gaining Currency: The Rise of the Renminbi.[18][19] As the date for the designation of the Chinese renminbi as an IMF major global currency also approached, Prasad

thinks fears of a [Chinese] financial meltdown are overblown. Most borrowers and lenders, he points out, are owned by the government, so banks are unlikely to pull their loans and precipitate a cascading crisis. Still, economic and financial fragility, he argues, will limit the rise of the Chinese yuan as a global “safe haven” currency.[20]

The book was launched at Brookings with a panel including Prasad, Ben Bernanke and others moderated by Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal.[18][21]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Calmes, Jackie (2013-06-16). "Lines Blur in U.S.-Europe Debate on Austerity". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-04-05.
  2. ^ Brookings Institution website search, brookings.edu. Retrieved 2016-09-13.
  3. ^ "Senior Fellow and New Century Chair in International Economics, Brookings Institution", vivo.cornell.edu. "Prasad, Eswar Chairperson 2010 -". Retrieved 2016-09-13.
  4. ^ Beattie, Alan (2011-05-15). "Crisis threatens European role at IMF". The Financial Times. Retrieved 2011-05-16.
  5. ^ IMF Staff Papers, a journal of the IMF
  6. ^ Finance & Development, a quarterly magazine of the IMF
  7. ^ IMF Research Bulletin, an online quarterly bulletin
  8. ^ Prasad's author page at NBER
  9. ^ "Prasad's fellow page at IZA". Archived from the original on 2008-05-05. Retrieved 2009-03-13.
  10. ^ "Testimony before the USCC on China's Role in the Origins of and Response to the Global Recession" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-03-25. Retrieved 2009-03-13.
  11. ^ Modernizing China's Growth Paradigm
  12. ^ Identifying the Common Component of International Economic Fluctuations: A New Approach
  13. ^ A Pragmatic Approach to Capital Account Liberalization
  14. ^ See, e.g., Keane, M. and E. Prasad (2002). "Inequality, Transfers and Growth: New Evidence from the Economic Transition in Poland," Review of Economics and Statistics, 84:2, 324-341.
  15. ^ Prasad, Eswar. "The Dollar Trap".
  16. ^ Davis, Bob, "8 Questions: Eswar Prasad, ‘The Dollar Trap’", Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2014.
  17. ^ Davidson, Paul. "U.S. exporters feel chill in Russia orders". USA Today. Retrieved 26 March 2014. It's unlikely that Obama will impose drastic restrictions on trade between the two countries, says Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University. But, he says, U.S. organizations such as the Export-Import Bank could feel pressured to limit loans or guarantees to companies seeking to sell to Russia for the first time or expand into new markets.
  18. ^ a b "Gaining currency: The rise of the renminbi". Brookings. 2016-09-09. Retrieved 2016-09-13.
  19. ^ Eswar S. Prasad (13 September 2016). Gaining Currency: The Rise of the Renminbi. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-063107-9.
  20. ^ Browne, Andrew, "Chinese Debt Soars Into Space", Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2016. Retrieved 2016-09-13.
  21. ^ Gaining Currency, global.oup.com. Retrieved 2016-09-13.

External links[edit]

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