NEW YORK — The International Monetary Fund plans to appoint Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas as the Fund’s Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department, the multilateral lender announced today in a statement.

Gourinchas will succeed Gita Gopinath, who is set to join the Fund’s management team as First Deputy Managing Director. He begins his work as the IMF’s new Chief Economist on January 24, initially on a part-time basis as he concludes some prior teaching commitments, transitioning to full-time on April 1, the IMF said.

“I am very pleased to announce that Pierre-Olivier will join us as the Fund’s next Chief Economist,” said Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the Washington DC-based institution. “He brings a stellar track record of scholarship and intellectual leadership in macroeconomic areas critical to our work—from global imbalances and capital flows to the stability of the international monetary and financial system, and more recently, to economic policies for the pandemic era,” Georgieva added.

Gourinchas joined UC Berkeley in 2003 and is currently the University of California at Berkeley’s Faculty Director of the Clausen Center for International Business & Policy, and the S.K. and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management. He was also assistant professor of economics at Princeton University from 1998 to 2003 and before that assistant professor of economics at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

Gourinchas is also Program Director of International Finance and Macroeconomics at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). From 2012 to 2013, he was a member of the French Council of Economic Advisors to the Prime Minister. In 2008 he was awarded the Prix du Meilleur Jeune Économiste for best French economist under age 40, and before that in 2007 won the Germán Bernácer Prize for best European Economist under age 40 working in macroeconomics and finance, according to the statement.