Simon Johnson

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., a co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, and a member of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee.

In addition, Johnson is a member of the private sector systemic risk council founded by Sheila Bair in 2012. In July 2014, he joined the Financial Research Advisory Committee of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR). From April 2009 to April 2015, he was a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers.

“For his articulate and outspoken support for public policies to end too-big-to-fail”, Johnson was named a Main Street Hero by the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) in 2013. In April 2015, the Washington Examiner placed Johnson at #11 on their list of New Voices for 2015.

Over the past six years, Prof. Johnson has published more than 300 high impact pieces in the New York Times, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Republic, BusinessWeek, The Huffington Post, The Financial Times, and Project Syndicate.

“The Quiet Coup” received over a million views when it appeared in The Atlantic in early 2009. His book 13 Bankers: the Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (with James Kwak), was an immediate bestseller and has become one of the mostly highly regarded books on the financial crisis. Their follow-up book on U.S. fiscal policy, White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters for You, won praise across the political spectrum.

From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, Johnson was the International Monetary Fund's economic counsellor (chief economist) and director of its research department. He also helped to found and run the NBER Africa Project.

Johnson holds a BA in economics and politics from the University of Oxford, an MA in economics from the University of Manchester, and a PhD in economics from MIT.