Adam Posen Biography

Adam Posen is President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the world’s leading non-partisan think tank on economics and globalization. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on fiscal and monetary policy, financial crises, and the economies of Europe, Japan, and the United States.

From September 2009, by appointment of the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dr. Posen served for three years as an external member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee. During this critical period for the world economy, he was a prominent advocate of activist policy response to the financial crisis, successfully led the MPC into quantitative easing, brought innovative efforts to stimulate business investment to the top of the UK economic agenda, and accurately forecast global inflation developments.

Adam brings a uniquely international perspective to macroeconomics: he worked in finance in Germany following reunification; wrote the definitive book on Japan’s economic crisis of the 1990s and counseled the Koizumi government that subsequently turned Japan around; co-authored with Ben Bernanke a reform program for Fed policy, and currently advises the US Congressional Budget Office; and consulted for the UK Cabinet Office on the successful London G20 summit of 2009 prior to joining the MPC.

Described by the Financial Times as “outspoken but charming,” Adam is also renowned for his wit and his ability to convey economic analyses and prescriptions in practical yet stirring terms. Among the most cited economists in the press, he appears frequently on Bloomberg, CNBC, BBC, and NPR programs, and his commentary is published regularly in the world’s leading newspapers. He has earned plaudits speaking to varied audiences from high-level investors’ dinners to gatherings of hundreds of university students to assemblies of non-financial business people of all stripes.