Agustín Carstens holds a M.A. (1983) and a Ph.D. (1985) in economics from the University of Chicago.

He received his B.A. in economics (summa cum laude) from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in 1982, with a thesis on determining the forward exchange rate in Mexico, for which he received the 1983 Tlacaelel National Prize in Economic Consulting from Consultores Internacionales, S.C. He also won the 1985 National Research Prize in Economics from Banco Nacional de México, S.A. Dr. Carstens began his professional career in 1980 at Banco de México, where, despite his youth, he held many top level positions at the central bank’s International Affairs Department, first as Foreign Exchange trader, and then as Deputy Manager and Manager of the Foreign Exchange and Market Analysis Department.

In 1989, he became the central bank’s International Treasurer and represented Banco de México in Mexico’s Brady Bond foreign debt restructuring negotiations. From June 1991 to May 1993, he served as Banco de México’s Treasurer and had, among other responsibilities, the task of managing the central bank’s reserves, the money market operations through public debt securities, and Banco de México’s interventions in the foreign exchange and money markets. From June 1993 to March 1994, he was Chief of Staff in the Governor’s Office and was later named Head of Economic Research of Mexico’s central bank until 1999. From 1999 to 2000, Dr. Carstens was appointed Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), representing the casting votes of Spain, Mexico, Central America and Venezuela within the organization.

He served as Deputy Finance Minister in Mexico from 2000 to 2003, when he was appointed Deputy Managing Director at the International Monetary Fund, and was responsible for handling the IMF’s relationship with more than 70 member countries. On October 2006, he was invited by Mexico’s elected President Felipe Calderón to join his transition cabinet as Chief Economic Coordinator, in charge of framing the new administration’s economic and financial program.

On December 1 of that year, he was appointed Mexico’s Minister of Finance, a position he held until December 9, 2009. While serving as Minister of Finance, Dr. Carstens also chaired the IMF and World Bank Joint Development Committee from March 2007 to October 2009. On December 9, 2009, he was proposed by President Calderón as Governor of Banco de México. After the Senate ratified the President’s proposal on December 28, he was appointed Governor for a 6-year term, from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2015.

His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. His work includes analysis of the interaction of exchange rate regimes with monetary policy, capital flows, and trade flows as well as studies of international reserves holdings, country balance sheet exchange rate exposure, the cross-country impact of fiscal policy, and the current crisis in the euro area. In addition to his book, Exchange Rate Regimes in the Modern Era (MIT Press, 2009), Shambaugh has published in The American Economic Review, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, and other leading journals.

Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Shambaugh taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and served first as Senior Economist for International Economics and then Chief Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and a visiting scholar at the IMF. Shambaugh received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 for services to financial journalism. He was made a Doctor of Science (Econ), honoris causa, by the London School of Economics in December 2006.

Mr. Wolf was joint winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism for 1989 and 1997. He won the RTZ David Watt memorial prize for 1994. He won the “Accenture Decade of Excellence” at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards of 2003. He won the “Commentator of the Year” award at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards of 2008. He won the Ludwig Erhard Prize for economic commentary for 2009. He won “Commentariat of the Year 2009” at the Comment Awards, sponsored by Editorial Intelligence. He was placed 15th in Foreign Policy’s list of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” in December 2009 and 37th in the same list for 2010. He was joint winner of the 2009 award for columns in “giant newspapers” at the 15th annual Best in Business Journalism competition of The Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

He was a member of the UK government’s Independent Commission on Banking between June 2010 and September 2011.

Mr. Wolf’s most recent publications are Why Globalization Works (Yale University Press, 2004) and Fixing Global Finance (Washington D.C: Johns Hopkins University Press, and London: Yale University Press, 2008).

Gang Yi, is the administrator of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) and a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, where his responsibilities include overseeing foreign exchange administration, foreign reserve management and international affairs.

He is also a member on the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China and a professor of economics at the China Center for Economic Research (CCER, Peking University).

Mr. Yi received his Ph.D. in Economics from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 1986 and taught at Indiana University (Indianapolis) from 1986 to 1994 (with tenure since 1992) before returning to China. Together with Justin Lin and several foreign-trained economists, Mr. Yi co-founded CCER in 1994, which has since become a major teaching and research center of economics as well as an influential policy research institute in China.

After joining the People’s Bank of China in 1997, Mr. Yi was involved in important reform initiatives such as interest rate liberalization, restructuring of major commercial banks and rural credit cooperatives and exchange rate regime reform. As a scholar, Mr. Yi’s research interests include money, banking and the Chinese economy and his most recent book is On the Financial Reform of China (2009).