Transition Assistance Practice Group /

Erik Berglof

Professor Erik Berglof is the inaugural Chief Economist at the Asian Infrastruture Investment Bank, where he sets the vision and strategy for the Economics Department and leads the planning, implementation and supervision of its work plan in support of the Bank’s mandate. Prior to joining AIIB in September 2020, he was Director of the Institute of Global Affairs and of its Global Policy Lab at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). 

Previously, he was a member of the Secretariat for the G20 Eminent Persons Group, tasked with reviewing global financial governance, and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Futures Council on the Financial and Monetary Systems. He is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Institute for New Economic Thinking in New York.

From 2006 to 2015, Professor Berglof was the Chief Economist and Special Adviser to the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), where he was part of creating and co-led the Vienna Initiative, a European crisis response team credited with mitigating the impact of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. 

Before that, he was Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. He was Assistant Professor at Universite Libre de Bruxelles and has held visiting positions at Harvard, Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has also served as Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Sweden.

An expert in transition economics and institutional transformation through private sector development, Professor Berglof has published widely in top journals on economic and political transition, corporate governance, financial development and EU reform. He holds a PhD in Financial Economics and an MA in Business and Economics, both from the Stockholm School of Economics. 

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