Joaquín Vial

Dr Joaquín Vial R-T. studied economics at the University of Chile during a period of great political upheaval and a major economic crisis, so he specialized in macroeconomics. In the early 80s, he went to UPenn to pursue a PhD in Economics. Upon completion of his doctoral thesis – an econometric model of the world copper market – in the 1990s, after his return to Chile, he became involved in the definition of fisheries and forestry policies, during the transition to democracy. Thereafter, he participated in the definition and practical application of fiscal policy in the Ministry of Finance, where he was Budget Director. After that, he went to Harvard, and then to Columbia, to work with Jeff Sachs on a project to improve competitiveness in the Andean countries, in close collaboration with the governments of the region. Subsequently, he spent 8 years in the BBVA Research Department, where he led a group to study the main global trends that would shape financial markets in the coming decades. At the time of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, he was asked to lead  BBVA’s  Research teams in South America. In 2012, he left BBVA to become a member of the Board of the Central Bank, where he was deputy governor between 2017 and 2022. At the end of his term, he concentrated on teaching at the Catholic University.