Skip to main content

Biography

Kristin Forbes is the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Professor of Management and Global Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. She has regularly rotated between academia and senior policy positions. From 2014-2017 she was an External Member of the Monetary Policy Committee for the Bank of England. From 2003 to 2005 Forbes served as a Member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers (where she was the youngest person to ever hold this position). From 2001 to 2002 she was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Quantitative Policy Analysis, Latin American and Caribbean Nations in the U.S. Treasury Department. Forbes also was a Member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers for the State of Massachusetts from 2009-2014.

Forbes’ academic research addresses a number of policy-related questions in international macroeconomics and finance. Recent projects include work on: inflation dynamics, exchange rates, capital flows, macroprudential regulation, financial crises, contagion, current account imbalances, and capital controls. She has made important contributions to a literature using firm-level data to explore macroeconomic relationships. She has co-chaired research projects on the Global Financial Crisis, Global Linkages, and International Financial Contagion, including a co-edited book International Financial Contagion: How it Spreads and How it Can be Stopped.

In 2019, Forbes was named an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for services to British economic policy. She received a Bicentennial Medal from Williams College in 2015 for members of the community with “outstanding achievement in any field of endeavor” and was named as one of the top 25 economists under the age of 45 who are “shaping how we think about the global economy” (by Finance & Development, 2014). She has also been honored as one of the 1000 most influential Londoners (Evening Standard, 2014) and as a "Young Global Leader" as part of the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Forbes is currently a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. She is also a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, Bellagio Group, and Council on Foreign Relations and on the Economic Advisory Panel for the New York Federal Reserve Bank. She was previously a member of the Trilateral Commission, on the Panel of Economic Advisers for the Congressional Budget Office, on the Advisory Panel for the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, and on the Academic Advisory Boards for the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development. She was a founding member and on the board of Deworm the World, an organization focused on improving education in the developing world through school-based deworming.

Forbes teaches classes on global economics, including one of the most popular classes at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. She has regularly been honored with teaching awards, including the “Jamieson Award” for teaching innovation, the “Teacher of the Year Award" and the “Excellence in Teaching Award”. Prior to joining MIT, Forbes worked in the investment banking division at Morgan Stanley and in the policy research department at the World Bank. Forbes received her PhD in Economics at MIT in 1998, where she won the Solow Prize for excellence in teaching and research. She obtained her BA, summa cum laude with highest honors from Williams College in 1992. In her free time, Forbes enjoys travelling, hiking, and scaling tall peaks (including Mt. Blanc and the Grand Teton). She ran the Boston Marathon in 2014 and London Marathon in 2016.

Back

  • Kristin J. Forbes

    Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Professor of Management

    Professor, Global Economics and Management

    MIT Sloan School of Management

    100 Main St

    Cambridge, MA 02142

    Office Number E62-416
    Phone Number (617) 253-8996

    Support Staff

    Sumaiya Rahman Haddad

    (617) 253-6679
  • Connect with Kristin