For a start, the 40-year-old Rajan, who will succeed the 50-year-old Kenneth Rogoff in October as the top economic adviser to the IMF’s managing director, Horst Köhler, is the youngest person ever to hold that pivotal post. But much more significantly, Rajan, an Indian citizen, is the first native of a developing country to do so.
“There are a lot of expectations in developing countries that somehow the policies of the IMF will now change dramatically,” acknowledges Rajan. “And this appointment does reflect a desire to move in a different direction. But it is less about developing countries and more that I have a strong record of research on financial institutions and that the IMF will spend more time on financial sector issues and stability.”
For the past 12 years, Rajan, who has an electrical engineering degree from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in finance from MIT, has taught finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. That, too, sets him apart from
his IMF predecessors; most, like Rogoff, who is returning to teach at Harvard, have backgrounds in macroeconomics. Asked about his own lack of the same, Rajan jokes, “I’ve taken macroeconomics courses.”
