Steve Hanke

Steve H. Hanke is a Professor of Applied Economics and Co-Director of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Troubled Currencies Project at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.; a Senior Advisor at the Renmin University of China’s International Monetary Research Institute in Beijing; a Special Counselor to the Center for Financial Stability in New York; and a contributing editor at Globe Asia Magazine. Prof. Hanke is also a member of the Charter Council of the Society of Economic Measurement and the Financial Advisory Council of the United Arab Emirates.
In the past, Prof. Hanke taught economics at the Colorado School of Mines and the University of California, Berkeley. He served as a Member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers in Maryland in 1976-77; as a Senior Economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1981-82; and as a Senior Advisor to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress in 1984-88. Prof. Hanke also served as a State Counselor to both the Republic of Lithuania in 1994-96 and the Republic of Montenegro in 1999-2003. He was also an Advisor to the Presidents of Bulgaria in 1997-2002, Venezuela in 1995-96, and Indonesia in 1998. He played an important role in establishing new currency regimes in Argentina, Estonia, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ecuador, Lithuania, and Montenegro. Prof. Hanke has also advised the governments of many other countries, including Albania, Kazakhstan, and Yugoslavia.
Prof. Hanke is a Distinguished Associate of the International Atlantic Economic Society; a Distinguished Professor at the Universitas Pelita Harapan in Jakarta, Indonesia; and a Professor Asociado (the highest honor awarded to international experts of acknowledged competence) at the Universidad del Azuay in Cuenca, Ecuador. He has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, the Free University of Tbilisi, Istanbul Kültür University, and Varna Free University in honor of his scholarship on exchange-rate regimes. In 1998, he was named one of the twenty-five most influential people in the world by World Trade Magazine.
Prof. Hanke is a well-known currency and commodity trader. Currently, he serves as a member of the Supervisory Board of Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V., in Amsterdam, and Chairman Emeritus of the Friedberg Mercantile Group, Inc. in Toronto. During the 1990s, he served as President of Toronto Trust Argentina in Buenos Aires, the world’s best-performing emerging market mutual fund in 1995.
Prof. Hanke’s most recent books are Zimbabwe: Hyperinflation to Growth (2008) and A Blueprint for a Safe, Sound Georgian Lari (2010), and Juntas Monetarias para Paises en Desarollo (2015).
Prof. Hanke and his wife, Liliane, reside in Baltimore and Paris.