Maurice Obstfeld is the Economic Counsellor and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund, on leave from the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he is the Class of 1958 Professor of Economics and formerly Chair of the Department of Economics (1998-2001). He arrived at Berkeley in 1991 as a professor, following permanent appointments at Columbia (1979-1986) and the University of Pennsylvania (1986-1989), and a visiting appointment at Harvard (1989-90). He received his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1979 after attending the University of Pennsylvania (B.A., 1973) and King’s College, Cambridge University (M.A., 1975).

From July 2014 to August 2015, Dr. Obstfeld served as a Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. He was previously (2002-2014) an honorary advisor to the Bank of Japan's Institute of Monetary and Economic Studies. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among Dr. Obstfeld's honors are Tilburg University’s Tjalling Koopmans Asset Award, the John von Neumann Award of the Rajk Laszlo College of Advanced Studies (Budapest), and the Kiel Institute’s Bernhard Harms Prize. He has given a number distinguished lectures, including the American Economic Association’s annual Richard T. Ely Lecture, the L. K. Jha Memorial Lecture of the Reserve Bank of India, and the Frank Graham Memorial Lecture at Princeton. Dr. Obstfeld has served both on the Executive Committee and as Vice President of the American Economic Association. He has consulted and taught at the IMF and numerous central banks around the world.

He is also the co-author of two leading textbooks on international economics, International Economics (10th edition, 2014, with Paul Krugman and Marc Melitz) and Foundations of International Macroeconomics (1996, with Kenneth Rogoff), as well as more than 100 research articles on exchange rates, international financial crises, global capital markets, and monetary policy.

Latest posts:

• Global Growth Plateaus as Economic Risks Materialize
• Steering the World Toward More Cooperation, Not Less
• The Global Expansion: Still Strong but Less Even, More Fragile, Under Threat
• Addressing Global Imbalances Requires Cooperation
• Global Economy: Good News for Now but Trade Tensions a Threat
• The Euro Area Needs a Fiscal Union
• The Current Economic Sweet Spot Is Not the “New Normal”
• The Year in Review: Global Economy in 5 Charts
• Understanding and Managing Financial Interdependence
• Understanding the Global Financial Cycle
• Global Economic Upswing Creates a Window of Opportunity
• A Firming Recovery
• Assessing Global Imbalances: The Nuts and Bolts
• Two to Tango—Inflation Management in Unusual Times
• Revisiting the Paradox of Capital: The Reversal of Uphill Flows
• Global Economy Gaining Momentum—For Now
• Why International Financial Cooperation Remains Essential
• Dealing with Sovereign Debt—The IMF Perspective
• A Shifting Global Economic Landscape: Update to the World Economic Outlook
• A Shifting U.S. Policy Mix: Global Rewards and Risks
• The IMF is Not Asking Greece for More Austerity
• Strengthening Canada's Economic Toolkit: Improving the Inflation Targeting Framework
• The World Economy: Moving Sideways
• The Whole Can Be Greater Than the Sum of its Parts
• Tariffs Do More Harm Than Good at Home
• A Spanner in the Works: An Update to the World Economic Outlook
• Global Growth: Too Slow for Too Long
• Oil Prices and the Global Economy: It's Complicated
• Subdued Growth, Diminished Prospects, Action Needed
• The Price of Oil and the Price of Carbon
• What Future for Unconventional Monetary Policies
• The Quest for Robust and Synchronized Growth