IMF Top Economist Gourinchas to Step Down to Return to Academia

The International Monetary Fund said chief economist Pierre‑Olivier Gourinchas will leave after four years to return to academia at the University of California, Berkeley.

The departure will be effective July 1, the Washington-based fund said Friday in a statement. The fund has not yet announced a successor.

Top economists have in recent times stayed in the job anywhere from three years — in the case of Gita Gopinath, the first woman in the role and Gourinchas’s immediate predecessor — to seven years — when Olivier Blanchard held the role from 2008 to 2015.

Pierre Olivier Gourinchas, chief economist at the IMF, during a news conference on the world economic outlook at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, April 14, 2026.

Photographer: Samuel Corum/Bloomberg

Gourinchas, a French national, ...