Anne Krueger

Anne Krueger is one of the most influential trade and development economists of the 20th century. She coined the term "rent-seeking" in a 1974 paper to describe the socially costly pursuit of government-created rents through lobbying and market manipulation. She served as chief economist at the World Bank and later as First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF from 2001 to 2006, overseeing the institution's responses to Argentina's default and other emerging market crises. Her work on trade liberalization and structural reform has been foundational in development economics. Her analysis of how import substitution industrialization policies in developing countries created inefficiencies and rent-seeking opportunities, combined with her empirical evidence on the benefits of export-led growth strategies, provided much of the intellectual basis for the structural reform programs that shaped development policy during the 1980s and 1990s.