Vita

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas grew up in Montpellier, France. He attended Ecole Polytechnique and received his PhD in Economics in 1996 from MIT. He taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Princeton University before joining UC Berkeley department of economics.

Professor Gourinchas' main research interests are in international macroeconomics and finance. His recent research focuses on geo-economic fragmentation (with Gita Gopinath, Andrea Presbitero and Petia Topalova), the drivers of global inflation (with Mai Dao, Allan Dizioli, Chris Jackson, Daniel Leigh, Prachi Mishra),  covered and uncovered parity deviations (with Mai Chi Dao and Oleg Itskhoki), exchange rate and term premia (with Walker Ray and Dimitri Vayanos), the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on small and medium sized firms (with Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, Veronika Penciakova and Nick Sander), the scarcity of global safe assets, global imbalances and currency wars (with Ricardo Caballero and Emmanuel Farhi); on the International Monetary System and the role of the U.S. dollar (with Hélène Rey); on the Dominant Currency Paradigm (with Gita Gopinath); on the determinants of capital flows to and from developing countries (with Olivier Jeanne); on international portfolios (with Nicolas Coeurdacier); and on the global financial crisis (with Maury Obstfeld). 

Professor Gourinchas is the laureate of the 2007 Bernàcer Prize for best European economist working in macroeconomics and finance under the age of 40, and of the 2008 Prix du Meilleur Jeune Economiste for best French economist under the age of 40. In 2012-2013, Professor Gourinchas was a member of the French Council of Economic Advisors to the Prime Minister. From 2009 to 2016 he was the editor-in-chief of the IMF Economic Review and from 2017 to 2019 the managing editor of the Journal of International Economics. Between 2019 and 2022, he was co-editor of the American Economic Review. From 2017 to 2022 he served as director of the NBER's International Finance and Macroeconomics Program.

Professor Gourinchas is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a Distinguished Fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research. 

He is currently on-leave from UC Berkeley and serving as Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund.