Keynote Speakers
Eswar Prasad
Cornell University
Keynote Address
The Future of Money in a World of Decentralized Finance
Speaker Biography
Eswar Prasad is the Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he holds the New Century Chair in International Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a former head of the IMF’s China Division. Prasad’s latest book, The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance, was listed among the best economics books of 2021 by the Economist, the Financial Times, and Foreign Affairs. His previous books include Gaining Currency: The Rise of the Renminbi (Oxford, 2016) and The Dollar Trap: How the U.S. Dollar Tightened Its Grip on Global Finance (Princeton, 2014).
Prasad has testified before the Senate Finance Committee, the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is the creator of the Brookings-Financial Times world economy index (TIGER: Tracking Indices for the Global Economic Recovery). His op-ed articles have appeared in the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.
Tobias Adrian
International Monetary Fund
Keynote Address
The Evolution of Money and
Payment Platforms
Speaker Biography
Tobias Adrian is the Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In this capacity, he leads the IMF’s work on financial sector surveillance, monetary and macroprudential policies, digital money, financial regulation, bank resolution, debt management, capital markets, and climate finance. He also oversees capacity building activities in IMF member countries with regard to the supervision and regulation of financial systems, bank resolution, central banking, monetary and exchange rate regimes, central bank digital currency, and debt management.
Prior to joining the IMF, Mr. Adrian was a Senior Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Associate Director of the Research and Statistics Group. At the Federal Reserve, he contributed to monetary policy, financial stability policies, and to crisis management.
Adrian has published extensively in economics and finance journals. His research spans macro-finance, monetary policy, financial stability, and climate finance, with a focus on aggregate consequences of capital markets developments. He has taught at Princeton University and New York University. He is member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Central Banking and the Annual Review of Financial Economics. Adrian holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Economics, an MSc from the London School of Economics in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics, a Diplom from Goethe University Frankfurt and a Maîtrise from Dauphine University Paris. He received his Abitur in Literature and Mathematics from Humboldtschule Bad Homburg.