Raghuram Rajan, Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Reserve Bank of India Governor, has been named Euromoney’s Central Bank Fund Governor of the Year for 2014. Rajan assumed the role as the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India over a year ago in September 2013.
Governors were considered if “their key decisions had directly benefited both the performance and perception of their country’s economic and financial achievements the over the past 12 months.” The publication also took into account the analyses of the contributors to Euromoney Country Risk (ECR), which includes more than 400 economists from around the world.
“Raghuram Rajan’s tough monetary medicine combated the storm ravaging the deficit-ridden economy in the recent emerging market crisis. Now, he is battling vested interests to arouse a sleepy financial system for over one billion people,” according to the Euromoney website.
Rajan has been on leave from the Booth School of Business while serving in this prestigious role.
“It is nice to be recognized, but everything in India is still work in progress,” Rajan says. “The economy is turning around and I hope we will see it take off soon on the back of on-going reforms.”
This is not Rajan’s first honor and accolades: he won the inaugural Fischer Black Prize in 2003 for the best finance researcher under the age of 40; the global Indian of the year award from NASSCOM in 2011; the Infosys prize for the Economic Sciences in 2012; and the Center for Financial Studies-Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics in 2013.
Between 2003 and 2006, Rajan was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund. He is a member of the Group of Thirty and served as President of the American Finance Association in 2011; Rajan also is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He co-authored “Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists” with Luigi Zingales in 2003 and followed that up with “Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy,” for which he was awarded the Financial Times-Goldman Sachs prize for best business book in 2010.