Dev Kar is the Chief Economist Emeritus at Global Financial Integrity. Prior to joining the GFI, he was a Senior Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington DC. During a career spanning nearly 32 years at the IMF, Dr. Kar worked on a wide variety of macroeconomic and statistical issues, both at IMF headquarters and on different types of IMF missions to member countries (technical assistance, Article IV Consultations with member countries, and Use of IMF Resources).
His interesting assignments at the IMF included:
- research studies on the functions and role of central banks which formed the basis for the design, development, and implementation of a large-scale database on laws, regulations, and data on various aspects of central banking operations;
- technical papers on the operational budget of the IMF;
- carrying out complex IMF operational transactions with member countries;
- review of IMF lending programs involving the use of its financial resources in order to assess sovereign and liquidity risks;
- the monitoring of economic and political developments in Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and in Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF)-eligible countries;
- preparation of research papers and discussion notes on the role of the SDR in the international monetary system and the use of the SDR as a unit of account by multilateral institutions;
- critiquing technical assistance papers based on expert technical knowledge of international methodological guidelines on national accounts, price statistics, and merchandise trade;
- providing technical assistance to member countries in the area of national accounts, prices, and external trade in order to build members’ statistical capacities;
- preparing papers for discussion by the IMF Executive Board on recent cases of overdue financial obligations of certain members and assessing the likelihood of payments by these countries;
- preparing short papers on the external debt situation of heavily indebted countries and providing technical assistance to IMF economists in forecasting external debt profiles;
- conducting extensive research on early warning models that seek to predict an external debt crisis for heavily indebted countries; and
- developing statistical measures and indicators on quantitative and non-quantitative trade restrictions, dumping, and other trade policy issues, comparing them across countries and within countries over time.
Dr. Kar has a Ph.D. in Economics from the George Washington University (Major: Monetary Economics), an M. Phil (Economics), also from the same university (Major: International Economics) and a M.S. (Computer Science) from Howard University (Major: Database Management Systems). His undergraduate degree in Physics is from St. Xavier’s College, University of Calcutta, India. Dr. Kar has published a number of articles on macroeconomic and statistical issues both inside and outside the IMF.