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Kiel Institute Bernhard Harms Prize 2024 Awarded to Hélène Rey
“Hélène Rey is an internationally outstanding scholar who has broadened the horizons of international macroeconomics through her groundbreaking research. With great tenacity, a pronounced scientific curiosity and exceptional talent, she has not only succeeded in questioning some supposed certainties of international macroeconomics but has also identified alternative determinants of international capital flows,” said Moritz Schularick, President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
"Among others, she has demonstrated the existence of a global financial cycle that significantly limits the impact of national monetary policies, regardless of the exchange rate regime chosen. Due to her extraordinary ability to derive targeted financial policy recommendations from scientific findings, she is an internationally highly esteemed contact for monetary and financial policy issues in the media and politics.”
Hélène Rey will receive the Bernhard Harms Prize during the Kiel Institute Geoeconomics Conference on October 17. Among her most influential academic achievements is the development of the concept known as the “global financial cycle”, introduced in several of her research papers. The concept examines how global financial markets and capital flows are interconnected and how they affect individual economies, highlighting the fact that national monetary policies are often constrained by global financial conditions, even for countries with flexible exchange rates. This contribution has far-reaching implications for both economic theory and practical policy-making.
Prior to her current position at the London Business School, Hélène Rey was Professor of Economics and International Affairs in the Department of Economics at Princeton University and at the Woodrow Wilson School, where she began as an Assistant Professor. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics and a second one from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), after receiving an undergraduate degree from the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration and a master's degree from Standford University.
In addition to her academic achievements, Hélène Rey continues to make significant contributions to various global economic and financial bodies and groups. She is a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association and a Correspondant of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. She is a member of the Group of Thirty, the Bellagio Group on international economics, and serves on the external advisory group to the Managing Director of the IMF. She was a member of the Haut Conseil de Stabilité Financière (French Macro-Prudential Authority) from 2014 to 2024. Previously, she was a member of the Conseil d’Analyse Economique until 2012 and served on the Board of the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution from 2010 to 2014. Furthermore, she is Vice-President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and President-elect of the European Economic Association. She regularly writes a column for the French newspaper Les Echos.
The Bernhard Harms Prize
Since 1964, the Kiel Institute’s Bernhard Harms Prize has been awarded to distinguished scholars for their outstanding research in international economics as well as for exceptional efforts in advancing global economic relations. This year, the award ceremony will again be held in Berlin. It will take place on October 17, 2024, in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action as part of the 3rd Kiel-CEPR Conference on Geoeconomics. The prize is endowed with 10,000 euros and is named after Bernhard Harms, who founded the Kiel Institute in 1914.
Recent winners of the Bernhard Harms Prize are Gita Gopinath (2023), Lord Nicholas Stern (2021), Carmen Reinhart (2018), Marc Melitz (2016), and Abhijit Banerjee (2014).