Shang-Jin Wei

Biography

Shang-Jin Wei is the Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Director General of its Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department. He is the chief spokesperson on economic and development trends. He also leads the production and dissemination of ADB’s flagship knowledge products, and directs ADB’s support for various regional cooperation fora.

Before he joined ADB, he was a chaired professor with tenure and Director of the Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia University, Director of the US National Bureau of Economic Research’s working group on the Chinese economy, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Between 2002 and 2007 he was Adviser, Division Chief and Assistant Director, respectively, at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), advising on issues in international trade, investment and globalisation. He was also Chief of Mission to Myanmar. Prior to his work at the IMF, Mr Wei was an assistant and associate professor at Harvard University from 1992 to 1999.

Mr Wei has received awards for: his pioneering research on global value chains; the invention of the theory of the competitive saving motive and its application to understanding the high savings patterns in Asia; and a generalisation of the competitive savings idea to enable a deeper understanding of entrepreneurship and economic growth. Mr Wei earned a PhD in Economics and a master’s degree in Finance from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a master’s degree in Economics from Pennsylvania State University.