Prakash Loungani is a macroeconomist known for his work on the difficulty of forecasting recessions (“the record of failure to predict recessions is virtually unblemished”), which has been featured in the Financial Times and The Guardian and on the BBC. He has nudged macroeconomists towards adopting the goal of “

inclusive growth Inclusive growth is economic growth that raises standards of livings for broad swaths of a population. It is widely accepted that inclusive growth is challenging to be achieved in the real world. Both the intangibility and long term perspective mak ...

” through research on understanding and lowering unemployment (“Okun’s Law: Fit at 50?”); documenting the impact of austerity on inequality (“Painful Medicine”); and uncovering the role of unfettered capital mobility across national borders in lowering labor’s share of income (“Opening Up to Inequity”). His early research focused on understanding the impacts of oil prices on the economy. He is an advisor and senior personnel manager in the

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 191 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of las ...

's Independent Evaluation Office. He blogs as The Unassuming Economist.

Career and education

Loungani earned his BA from the University of Bombay (now the

University of Mumbai University of Mumbai is a public state university in Mumbai. It is one of the largest university systems in the world with over 549,000 students on its campuses and affiliated colleges. , the university had 711 affiliated colleges. It was est ...

) and his MA and PhD in economics from the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

. Prior to joining the IMF in 1998, he was an analyst at the Federal Reserve Board's International Finance Division (covering Asian economies during the 1997-98 crisis), a senior economist at the

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (informally the Chicago Fed) is one of twelve Federal Reserve Banks that, along with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, make up the Federal Reserve System, the United States' central bank. The Chicago Fed ...

during 1990-92, and an assistant professor at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preem ...

during 1986-90. He was an adjunct professor of management at Vanderbilt University from 2001 to 2017. Since 2023, Loungani has served as Program Director and a senior lecturer for th
Master of Science in Applied Economics
program at Johns Hopkins University.

Publications

Loungani has over 30 publications in the leading field journals in economics, which places him among the top 5% of economists based on citations and impact, according to IDEAS/RePEc. In addition to his technical work, he is known for his profiles of famous economists, including Robert Barro, Dani Rodrik, Jeff Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz and Stanley Fischer.

Selected works

*The distributional effects of capital account liberalization, IMF Working Paper 15/243, ''Journal of Development Economics'', 2018, vol. 30, 127-44 (with D. Furceri). *Okun’s law: fit at fifty? ''Journal of Money, Credit & Banking,'' 2017, vol. 49 (Oct.), 1413–41 (with L. Ball and D. Leigh). *Regional labor market adjustments in the United States, ''Review of Economics & Statistics'', 2017, vol. 99 (May), 243-57 (with M. Dao and D. Furceri). *How accurate are private sector forecasts? Cross-country evidence from consensus forecasts of output growth, 2001, ''International Journal of Forecasting'', Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 419–32. *The role of energy in real business cycle models, 1992, ''Journal of Monetary Economics'', Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 173–89 (with In-Moo Kim).

References

External links

Prakash Loungani: Bio
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Loungani, Prakash Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Rochester alumni University of Florida faculty 20th-century Indian economists 21st-century Indian economists