A Change of Focus: Gopinath Returns from IMF to the Research Frontier

Gita Gopinath’s Littauer office looks much as it did before COVID. The furniture is unchanged, and she seems not to have aged at all. Yet the steady hum of construction in the background suggests that something is different. In truth, a great deal has changed since she left for the IMF four years ago. She returns to the familiar setting with a new outlook. Her “eye-opening” experiences at the IMF— experiences that have given her an insider’s perspective on the very issues she has spent years studying—have shaped her and her research.

Gopinath returned this fall to the Harvard University Department of Economics as the Gregory and Ania Coffey Professor of Economics, after serving at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the First Deputy Managing Director. There, she was the number- two official where she represented the IMF at the G7 and G20 while maintaining strategic partnerships with those governments. She also led the IMF’s work on surveillance and related policies, and oversaw the work of senior staff. Prior to being the FDMD she was the Chief Economist at the IMF, the first woman to hold that role. 

We caught up for a de-brief with Gopinath, to delve into her IMF experiences, her research and teaching plans, and some insight into what put her on this path of studying international economics.

Q: Tell us about your return to Harvard Economics.

“It has been great to be back, but I am still very much in a transition period—getting settled and meeting and reconnecting with colleagues.” 

While there are some constants, she acknowledges that much has changed. Even her office, which she jokes is smaller than she remembers, has lost the beautiful view—replaced by a construction zone. 

On a heavier note, the loss of colleagues is a noticeable void, she explains. “The main difference is several people are no longer here, such as Emmanuel (Farhi) and Alberto (Alesina) — which is a big change. I am also returning to a very different environment with how the U.S. administration sees the role of universities.”

Gopinath’s day-to-day activity is transitioning as well. “At the IMF I was the number two official, which meant I had a pretty intense day – meeting with IMF colleagues and country officials. I also had a larger staff and traveled a lot in that job. Now I travel less and my day is less intense, but it is nevertheless packed with research , seminars, working with students, public communications and more. I don’t think I know how to relax!”

In addition to her research, this fall she is co-leading a macroeconomics reading group. In the spring, she will co-teach a graduate-level international macro course with Oleg Itskhoki.

Q: What are some lessons-learned that you bring back to Harvard from the IMF?

“What was truly eye-opening about my time at the IMF was that I got a much better understanding of the big issues that countries grapple with, and also the constraints they face in implementing good policy,” Gopinath explains. “Secondly, the job required me to pay close attention economic developments that were taking place among the 191 member countries. That gave me a much better understanding of how different countries try to solve their problems in not necessarily the same ways. This experience is going to be helpful for me both as a researcher and as a teacher focusing on addressing what the big issues are of the day. It will help me in advising students by pointing them in the direction of what research will be the most valuable.”

Q: What were some surprising experiences at the IMF?

Gopinath acknowledges the marked differences between work in academia and at the IMF. “Because the job involved working with countries going through major turbulence—everything felt like a revelation. I was overseeing the IMF program with Ukraine—a country that is trying to maintain economic stability while fighting a war.”

The pace varied as well, she explains, “Everything about that job was high stakes. In a policy job you have to make high stakes decisions quickly because you do not have the luxury of time.” 

Q: How will you adjust to the return to the pace of academia at Harvard?

“I am curious to see how that goes. I have more control over my hours, but I also tend to fill those up by signing up for multiple projects! I want to take time to think harder about some things,” Gopinath says, including a deep dive into digital money, crypto currency, and stable coins. “That is an area I want to think harder about. Geoeconomic fragmentation impacts almost every aspect of international economics. Therefore, getting into exploring the consequences of the shifts in economic order on international trade, international finance, dollar dominance, all of that is going to be important. This is a phenomenally exciting time to be a researcher in international economics, because that is at the center of change.”

Q: What research projects are you working on?

Gopinath says she has been working on the broad topic of geoeconomic fragmentation, where “national and economic security considerations are driving economic policy. In turn, countries and firms are re-aligning who they trade with.”

“A second project that I spent several years on at the IMF is the so-called integrated policy framework which is a framework that helps countries determine the optimal mix of monetary policy, foreign exchange intervention, macro prudential policy, and capital flow measures to stabilize their economies against external shocks. This framework is one of the key frameworks being deployed now at the IMF to advise countries.”

Gopinath worked on this at the IMF and recently published, “Integrated Monetary and Financial Policies for Small Open Economies,” with Suman S. Basu, Emine Boz, Francisco Roch, and D. Filiz Unsal, in Econometrica. She says she will continue to work with her co-authors to do further work in that area.

Q: What made you decide to pursue academia?

“Going back to the time I was an undergraduate student in India 1989-1992—it coincided with a period when India went through a major economic crisis—that’s when I got really excited about economics as a subject and how economic policy can be used to solve major problems that countries face,” she says.

“I think that’s where it all started and I kept going. The reason I went into international economics was because the crisis India had was a balance of payments crisis, closely tied to its international exposure.”

Gopinath received a B.A. in economics from the University of Delhi, then went on to receive an M.A. in Economics first from the Delhi School of Economics, then from the University of Washington. She completed her PhD in Economics from Princeton University in 2001.

Q: What advice would you give your younger self?

“I would encourage my younger self to read much more widely than I did. I was very good about reading publications in technical journals, but less so in reading policy publications or closely following the news. Reading both kinds of publications gives one a much better sense of what are the good questions to research, and it can make research more exciting. For the same reason I would tell myself to be a little more adventurous and engage with researchers from other fields that are not economists.”

All advice that Gopinath herself says she plans to follow as she dives into a new frontier of research.