Raghuram G. Rajan

Biography

Raghuram Rajan is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth. He was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between September 2013 and September 2016 and the Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Bank for International Settlements between 2015 and 2016. Between 2003 and 2006, Dr. Rajan was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund.

Dr. Rajan’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance, and economic development. His latest book, Between Profits and Purpose: The Company in a Fracturing World will be published by Yale University Press in January 2028. The books he has written include Breaking the Mold: India's Untraveled Path to Prosperity in 2024 with Rohit Lamba , The Third Pillar: How the State and Markets hold the Community Behind in 2019, which was a finalist for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year prize, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, for which he was awarded the Financial Times prize for Business Book of the Year in 2010, and Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists in 2003 with Luigi Zingales.

Dr. Rajan was the President of the American Finance Association in 2011 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In January 2003, the American Finance Association awarded Dr. Rajan the inaugural Fischer Black Prize for the best finance researcher under the age of 40. The other awards he has received include the Infosys prize for the Economic Sciences in 2012, the Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics in 2013, Euromoney Central Banker Governor of the Year 2014, and Banker Magazine (FT Group) Central Bank Governor of the Year 2016.

Dr. Rajan is Senior Economic Advisor to BDT&MSD, and on advisory boards to PIMCO, Andersen Tax, and the stable coin RLUSD, as well as to the IMF Managing Director and the President of the New York Fed. He co-chairs the advisory committee to the Federal Reserve on balance sheet policies. He is Chairman of the Group of Thirty and the Per Jacobsson Foundation. 

 Recent publications include “Debt and Assets” with Efrain Benmelech and Nitish Kumar, forthcoming, Journal of Financial Economics. “Cross-border Spillovers: How US Monetary Conditions affect Mergers and Acquisitions Around the World”, with Katherina Bergant, Prachi Mishra, and Freddy Pinzon, forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. “Finance and Climate Resilience: Evidence from the long 1950s US Drought”, with Rodney Ramcharan, forthcoming, Journal of Finance. “Liquidity, liquidity everywhere, not a drop to use: Why flooding banks with central bank reserves may not expand liquidity”, with Viral Acharya, Journal of Finance, Volume 79, Issue 5, October 2024.

Research Interests

Corporate finance; theory of organizations; financial intermediation and regulation.

Academic Areas

• Finance