Carmen Reinhart

Carmen Reinhart is a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and co-author with Kenneth Rogoff of "This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly," a landmark study of financial crises globally. She has contributed extensively to research on emerging market sovereign debt crises, currency crises, and debt overhang — the phenomenon where high debt levels reduce investment and growth even when there is no immediate crisis. She served as Chief Economist of the World Bank from 2020 to 2022, overseeing the institution's economic research during the COVID-19 pandemic recovery period. Her research is among the most cited in international economics. Her work on financial repression — the set of policies that keep interest rates below inflation to reduce the real burden of government debt — identified a historical mechanism used by many countries to erode debt ratios, providing investors with a framework for understanding the long-run risks of holding nominal government bonds in high-debt environments.