Beatrice Weder di Mauro joined the Institute’s International Economics Department in January. She is President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a leading network of more than 1,300 top economists mostly based in Europe.  CEPR promotes research excellence with policy relevance and has had a long standing and deep relationship with the Graduate Institute: Institute Professor Richard Baldwin was the previous President of CEPR and continues to serve as Editor-in-Chief of its leading dissemination platform VoxEU.org, Professor Charles Wyplosz served as Policy Director of CEPR and now, Professor Ugo Panizza has become CEPR’s Vice-President in charge of New Ventures.

In addition to her roles as professor and president, Beatrice Weder Di Mauro is Research Professor and Distinguished Fellow at the Emerging Markets Institute of the Institut européen d’administration des affaires (INSEAD) in Singapore.

She speaks with us about her early interest in international macroeconomics and her research work.

What shaped your interest in macroeconomics?

My interest in international macroeconomics and financial crises was mainly shaped by my experience working at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. I was the economist for Kyrgyzstan. Coming out of a fully centrally planned economy, the entire monetary and fiscal system had to be re-designed. In many cases, transition economies went straight into a high-inflation crisis. I also have an interest in the development, growth and governance of emerging markets, which was triggered by growing up in Guatemala.

Why did you decide to join the Graduate Institute?

The Graduate Institute is a perfect fit for my main areas of interest in my research and policy advice, international macroeconomics and development. It has an excellent reputation in the international community and a deep relationship with the CEPR because both institutions share the goal of putting research excellence with policy relevance in the service of society, globally. Moreover, I have known and respected the Graduate Institute for many years, have recommended some of my best students for programmes here and have always had a great appreciation for the excellent faculty. I also love the spirit of cosmopolitanism at the Institute. It has already started to feel like home.

What have you been working on recently?

I have several work streams but I’ll concentrate on one about central banks and the risk in central bank balance sheets, which is joint work with Barry Eichengreen from the University of California, Berkeley, Julian Schumacher from the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bernd Bartels from Scope. Central banks in advanced countries have expanded their balance sheets very significantly in the course of combatting the financial crisis. In particular, after the zero lower bound, they have embarked on non-conventional policies that involve buying securities, therefore expanding their balance sheets. They now find themselves in a situation that is quite unprecedented and that may lead to threats to their independence and consequences for monetary policy – and that is the general purpose of our research. More specifically, we investigate what is driving the risk in central bank balance sheets and whether governance rules protect them from political interference. There are different types of governance rules, which may limit the extent of fiscal dominance over monetary policy.