Gita Gopinath to leave IMF in August; where is its first woman chief economist headed?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday announced that Gita Gopinath, First Deputy Managing Director, will leave the Fund at the end of August to return to Harvard University.

Gopinath will become the inaugural Gregory and Ania Coffey Professor of Economics in Harvard’s Department of Economics. She had joined the IMF in January 2019 as Chief Economist and was promoted to the First Deputy Managing Director role in January 2022.

“Gita has been an outstanding colleague—an exceptional intellectual leader, dedicated to the mission and members of the Fund, and a fabulous manager, always showing genuine care for the professional standing and wellbeing of our staff,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement.

She described Gopinath as having paired analytical rigour with practical policy advice during a challenging period that included the pandemic, wars, the cost-of-living crisis, and major shifts in global trade.

Georgieva said Gopinath oversaw the Fund’s multilateral surveillance and analytical work on fiscal and monetary policy, debt, and international trade, and contributed to systemic country surveillance and programmes, including those for Argentina and Ukraine.

“As Chief Economist, Gita ensured that the World Economic Outlook remained the preeminent report on the global economy—an especially impressive achievement during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Georgieva said.

Gopinath, who became the first female Chief Economist in IMF history, also spearheaded the Fund’s work on the Integrated Policy Framework and co-authored the Pandemic Plan to end the COVID-19 crisis.

“I am truly grateful for my time at the IMF, first as Chief Economist and then as First Deputy Managing Director,” Gopinath said on her departure. “I now return to my roots in academia, where I look forward to continuing to push the research frontier in international finance and macroeconomics to address global challenges, and to training the next generation of economists.”

The IMF said a successor will be named in due course.