Jonathan D. Ostry

Jonathan D. Ostry is Professor of Economics, Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto (with affiliations to the Munk School and to the Department of Economics), a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a Non-Resident Fellow at Bruegel, and a senior Fellow at the CD Howe Institute. Professor Ostry previously held a faculty appointment as Professor of the Practice in the Department of Economics at Georgetown University. Dr. Ostry served in senior roles for more than three decades at the International Monetary Fund, including as Deputy Director of the Research Department and Acting Director of the Asia and Pacific Department. Ostry received his PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago, and an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics. He received a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University (Balliol College). Professor Ostry’s recent academic and policy work has focused on the management of international capital flows; this work has been influential in bringing about a shift in the institutional position of the IMF on capital controls. Ostry has also published influential studies on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth, where his work suggests that high income inequality and a failure to sustain economic growth may be two sides of the same coin. Professor Ostry’s work has also focused on the issue of fiscal sustainability, and in particular on the role of a country’s track record of fiscal management in determining access to international capital markets. This work is used by the main credit rating agencies for their sovereign credit rating analysis. Professor Ostry is a highly cited economist in scholarly journals (ranked in the top 1 percent of economists worldwide over the past ten years, according to RePEc), and his writings have featured prominently in the financial press (the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Time, Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, NPR, and the BBC). Earlier in his career, Professor Ostry led the team at the IMF that produces its flagship publication, the World Economic Outlook, and was mission chief for a number of Asia-Pacific countries, including Australia and Japan. His recent books include Taming the Tide of Capital Flows (MIT Press, 2018) and Confronting Inequality: How Societies Can Choose Inclusive Growth (Columbia University Press, 2019).