page_title: Raghuram Rajan
section_title: Academic career
hierarchical_section_title: Raghuram Rajan / Career / Academic career
caption_attribution_description: English: Lionel Barber, Raghuram Rajan and Lloyd Blankfein Français&#160;: Lionel Barber, Raghuram Rajan et Lloyd Blankfein.
context_page_description: Raghuram Govinda Rajan is an Indian economist and the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Between 2003 and 2006 he was Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund. From September 2013 through September 2016 he was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India; in 2015, during his tenure at the RBI, he became the Vice-Chairman of the Bank for International Settlements.
  At the Federal Reserve annual Jackson Hole conference in 2005, Rajan warned about the growing risks in the financial system and proposed policies that would reduce such risks. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called the warnings "misguided" and Rajan himself a "luddite". However, following the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Rajan's views came to be seen as prescient and he was extensively interviewed for the Academy Awards-winning documentary Inside Job.
context_section_description: In 1991, Rajan joined as an assistant professor of finance at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, and became a full-time professor in 1995. He has taught as a visiting professor at Stockholm School of Economics, Kellogg School of Management, MIT Sloan School of Management, and Indian School of Business.
  Rajan has written extensively on banking, corporate finance, international finance, growth and development, and organisational structures. He is a regular contributor to Project Syndicate. He has collaborated with Douglas Diamond to produce much-cited work on banks, and their interlinkages with macroeconomic phenomena. He has worked with Luigi Zingales on the effect of institutions on economic growth, their research showing that development of free financial markets is fundamental to economic modernisation. Rajan and Zingales built on their work to publish Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists in 2003. The book argued that entrenched incumbents in closed financial markets stifle competition and reforms, thereby inhibiting economic growth. Rajan's 2010 book Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy examined the fundamental stresses in the American and the global economy that led to the financial crisis of 2007–2008. He argued that widening income inequality in the US, trade imbalances in the global economy, and the clash between arm's length financial systems, were responsible for bringing about the crisis. The book won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.
  The Research Papers in Economics project ranks him among the world's most influential economists, featuring him among the top 5% of authors. He was awarded the inaugural 2003 Fischer Black Prize, given biennially by the American Finance Association to the best finance researcher under the age of 40, for his "path-breaking contributions to our knowledge of financial institutions, the workings of the modern corporation, and the causes and consequences of the development of the financial sector across countries."
  He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, and served as the president of the American Finance Association in 2011. He is a member of the Group of Thirty international economic body. He has served as a founding member of the academic council of the Indian School of Business since 1998.
caption: Rajan, with Lionel Barber (left) and Lloyd Blankfein (right), at the FT and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award ceremony in 2010.
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