Hélène Rey

Born to a teacher and an engineer she grew up in Brioude in South-Central France.[1]

She received her undergraduate degree from ENSAE Paris in 1994[2] and a Master of Science degree in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University the same year. She has Ph.Ds from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and London School of Economics, both in 1998. After working as a lecturer at LSE 1997–2000 she was assistant professor and later professor (2006) at Princeton University where she also worked at Bendheim Center for Finance and Woodrow Wilson School.[3][4]

Her work focuses on international trade, financial imbalances, financial crises and the international monetary system.[5]

She was a member of the Conseil d'analyse économique which advises the French Prime Minister on economic matters 2010–2012. and is since 2012 a member of the Commission Economique de la Nation which advises the Finance Minister of France.[4]

She is a regular contributor the French magazine Les Échos.[4]

In 2013 she became the first woman to win the Yrjö Jahnsson Award, sharing the prize with Thomas Piketty.[1]

Rey is married to fellow professor of economics Richard Portes and the couple have a daughter. They live in London.[1]

Rey focuses her research on the determinants and consequences of financial trade and economic imbalances, the theory of financial crisis, and how the international monetary system is organized. Through her research, she has shown that certain countries different different gross external asset positions help them predict future financial positions along with their exchange rates.

She is credited with ground-breaking research into the structure of international payments and capital flows. By examining the balance sheets of creditor and debtor nations, she offered new insights into relative returns on cross-border investments. She explained her approach in an interview with the Financial Times, which wrote, "She also showed why the US is the world's banker. "We called it 'the US's exorbitant privilege'. The US earns more on external assets than it pays on external liabilities. It has an excess return on the order of 2 per cent ... So it issues a lot of government bonds that are happily bought by the rest of the world."[6][7]

• Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2005)
• Germán Bernácer Prize (2006)
• Fellow of the British Academy (2011)
• Birgit Grodal Award (2012)
• Fellow of the European Economic Association (2013)
• Fellow of the Econometric Society (2013)
• Yrjö Jahnsson Award, shared with Thomas Piketty (2013)[3]
• Named one of 25 brightest young economists by the International Monetary Fund.[5]
• Rey is a member of the Conseil d’Analyse Economique until 2012
• She is on the Board of the Board of the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (2010-2014)

• Clift, Jeremy (June 2015). "People in economics: Agent provocateur". Finance & Development. International Monetary Fund. 52 (2): 4–7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) Interview with Hélène Rey. Pdf.

• Hélène Rey publications indexed by Google Scholar