Brahima Coulibaly (PhD ’05), was recently appointed as Director - Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution after many years at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System where he was chief economist and head of the emerging market and developing economies group. He is also a Senior Fellow - Global Economy and Development.

Brahima Sangafowa Coulibaly
Brookings Expert Profile

Dr. Brahima Sangafowa Coulibaly is a senior fellow and director of the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution. He comes to Brookings from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System where he was chief economist and head of the emerging market and developing economies group. In that capacity, he oversaw the institution’s work on emerging markets and developing economies, provided intellectual leadership on economic and financial issues facing these economies, and often represented the Federal Reserve in international meetings and working groups on relevant topics. Dr. Coulibaly joined the Federal Reserve System in 2004 as a junior economist. He was promoted to senior economist in 2007, to principal economist in 2009, and to chief in 2013. He has also taught economics and international finance at Georgetown University, the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia, and the University of Michigan. Dr. Coulibaly has published widely on various topics in macroeconomics, development, international finance, monetary economics, and trade.

Dr. Coulibaly’s more notable works include “International Financial Spillovers to Emerging Market Economies: How Important Are Economic Fundamentals?" in the Journal of International Finance (forthcoming); “Trade Credit and International Trade During the Global Financial Crisis” in the International Review of Economics and Finance (2013); “South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Two-Step: Social Demand versus Macro Stability,” in the American Economic Review (2009); and “Effects of Financial Autarky and Integration: The Case of the South Africa Embargo” in the Journal of International Money and Finance (2009).

He holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s in economics, both from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley.

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