Tobias Adrian (born 23 July 1971) is a German and American

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...

who has been Financial Counsellor of the

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster glo ...

and Head of their Monetary and Capital Markets Department since 2017. He was previously employed at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he was a Senior Vice President and the Associate Director of the Research and Statistics Group. His research covers aspects of risk to the wider economy of developments in

capital markets A capital market is a financial market in which long-term debt (over a year) or equity-backed securities are bought and sold, in contrast to a money market where short-term debt is bought and sold. Capital markets channel the wealth of savers ...

. In particular, he is known for his work on the

global financial crisis Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to: Entertainment * ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003 * ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007 * ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989 * ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015 * Bruno ...

, monetary policy transmission, and the

yield curve In finance, the yield curve is a graph which depicts how the yields on debt instruments - such as bonds - vary as a function of their years remaining to maturity. Typically, the graph's horizontal or x-axis is a time line of months or ye ...

Early life and education

Adrian was born in Kronberg, West Germany and attended Humboldtschule, Bad Homburg. After studying at Goethe University Frankfurt,

Paris Dauphine University Paris Dauphine University - PSL (french: Université Paris-Dauphine, also known as Paris Dauphine - PSL or Dauphine - PSL) is a public research university based in Paris, France. It is one of the 13 universities formed by the division of the ancie ...

, and the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

, he studied for a Ph.D. at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, graduating in 2003. His doctoral thesis was entitled "Learning, dynamics of beliefs, and asset pricing".

Career

While working at the Federal Reserve, Adrian made substantial contributions to the role of financial intermediaries in

monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for very short-term borrowing (borrowing by banks from each other to meet their short-term needs) or the money supply, often a ...

transmission, with

Hyun-Song Shin Hyun Song Shin () is a South Korean economic theorist and financial economist who focuses on global games. He has been the Economic Adviser and Head of Research of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) since May 1, 2014. Previously, he w ...

. He also documented how the inversion of the yield curve can be viewed as a causal transmission channel for monetary policy tightening, with Hyun-Song Shin and . This is based on earlier work with Estrella that documented the forecasting power of the yield curve. Adrian also worked on widely adopted yield curve models with Richard Crump and . Together with

Markus Brunnermeier Markus Konrad Brunnermeier (born March 22, 1969) is an economist, who is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Economics at Princeton University, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is a faculty ...

of Princeton University, Adrian created one of the first measures of

systemic risk In finance, systemic risk is the risk of collapse of an entire financial system or entire market, as opposed to the risk associated with any one individual entity, group or component of a system, that can be contained therein without harming the ...

, the CoVaR. This measure, which takes into account spillover and contagion effects between asset classes and industries, was used to stress test banks following the

great recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

. Adrian has published extensively on the topic of

market liquidity In business, economics or investment, market liquidity is a market's feature whereby an individual or firm can quickly purchase or sell an asset without causing a drastic change in the asset's price. Liquidity involves the trade-off between the ...

, including policy effects and its procyclical behavior. He has also written on the importance of the

shadow banking system The shadow banking system is a term for the collection of non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) that provide services similar to traditional commercial banks but outside normal banking regulations. Examples of NBFIs include hedge funds, ins ...

in capital markets, and its prominent role in the development of the

financial crisis of 2007–2008 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fi ...

. More recently, Adrian has studied how financial conditions present asymmetric risks to

GDP growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate of ...

with and . This work led to a novel model for economic forecasting, under which multimodal distributions (allowing both "good" and "bad" outcomes) arise naturally under tight financial conditions.

Selected works

* * * *

References

Living people 21st-century German economists 21st-century American economists Federal Reserve economists International Monetary Fund people Alumni of the London School of Economics Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni {{DEFAULTSORT:Adrian, Tobias 1971 births