Smart Globalization - In the Age of China and India 

Keynote Speaker Bio

Simon Johnson
Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship
Sloan School of Management, MIT

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management, a position he has held since 2004. He is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., and co-founder of a website on the global economic and financial crisis, http://BaselineScenario.com. He is co-director of the NBER project on Africa and President of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies (term of office 2008-09).

From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, Professor Johnson was the International Monetary Fund's Economic Counsellor (chief economist) and Director of its Research Department. At the IMF, Professor Johnson led the global economic outlook team, helped formulate innovative responses to worldwide financial turmoil, and was among the earliest to propose new forms of engagement for sovereign wealth funds. He was also the first IMF chief economist to have a blog.

In 2000-2001 Professor Johnson was a member of the US Securities and Exchange Commissions Advisory Committee on Market Information. His assessment of the need for continuing strong market regulation is published as part of the final report from that committee.

Mr. Johnson is an expert on financial and economic crises. As an academic, in policy roles, and with the private sector, over the past 20 years he has worked on crisis prevention, amelioration, and recovery around the world, in both relatively rich and relatively poor countries. His work focuses on how policymakers can limit the impact of negative shocks and manage the risks faced by their countries.

Mr. Johnson has worked with most of the leading research organizations focused on global economic stability. He remains a Research Associate at the NBER, a CEPR Research Fellow, a BREAD affiliate, a member of the Advisory Group at the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington D.C., a member of the International Advisory Board of CASE in Warsaw, and a non-resident Research Fellow at the Asian Institute for Corporate Governance of Korea University. In 2006-07, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington D.C.

His previous experience includes two years as an Assistant Director in the IMF's Research Department, co-founding the Africa Project at the NBER, co-chairing a taskforce on Latin American reforms at CGD, helping to run a research center in Moscow, and belonging to the Global Advisory Board of Endeavor, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship in emerging markets.

Professor Johnson has regularly used his research findings, often in association with the Brattle Group, to provide advice on global strategy. In the past, he has worked closely with clients in the investment banking, oil, telecoms and consumer goods sectors on worldwide issues. He has also worked with the World Bank, the IMF and other international organizations in various advisory capacities.

Recent papers have appeared or are forthcoming in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Journal of Finance. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Comparative Economics, and Cliometrica (a new Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History).

His PhD is in economics from MIT, while his MA is from the University of Manchester and his BA is from the University of Oxford.