Heiko Hesse is an Economist in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after having worked in the Middle East Department and on the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report. Prior to that, he was an Economist at the World Bank from 2006-2007 on the Commission on Growth and Development, which brought together twenty-one leading practitioners from government, business, and the policymaking arenas and was chaired by Nobel Laureate Michael Spence. Before that in 2005-2006, he was a Visiting Scholar at Yale University and a consultant at the World Bank. He also worked at McKinsey in their Financial Institutions Practice, NERA Economic Consulting as well as PwC. Some of his recent research involved systemic risk, sovereign wealth funds, spillovers to EM countries as well as Islamic finance. He has published in a number of refereed academic journals (e.g. Journal of Development Economics) and is a frequent speaker at central banks and conferences. Heiko obtained his PhD in Economics from Nuffield College, University of Oxford and his B.Sc. in Financial Economics from the University of Essex.
A native of Germany and Thailand, he is a former professional football player for Borussia Dortmund as well as one of the main actors in the German movie documentary "Die Champions" (2003) and the sequel "HalbZeit" (2010) by Adolf-Grimme-Prize Winner Christoph Hübner. In Washington DC, he is engaged in international and transatlantic issues as the President of the Washington European Society, a non-profit.
Recent Blog Posts by Heiko Hesse
- The Future of Europe-Wide Stress Testing
- Balance-Sheet Repairs in European Banks
- State Aid and Europe’s Financial Sector
- Scenes From A Central Bank: A Turkish Tale in Two Acts
- Macro-Prudential Policies in Turkey
- Financial Spillovers and Deleveraging: The Case of Romania
- Room for Manoeuvre: The Deleveraging Story of Eurozone Banks Since 2008
- Next-Generation System-Wide Liquidity Stress Testing
- Global Market Conditions and Systemic Risks After Greece and Ireland’s Financial Crises
- Quo Vadis Credit Growth in the MENA Region?
- Gulf Cooperation Council Local Currency Bond Markets and Lessons from East Asia
- Debriefing Nakheel – Wider Implications for the Sukuk Market
- Asset Price Co-Movements and the Dollar Carry Trade
- Oil Prices and Bank Profitability: Evidence from Major Oil-Exporting Countries in the Middle East and North Africa
- Rapidly Growing Local-Currency Bond Markets Offer a Viable Alternative Funding Source for Emerging-Market Issuers
- Financial crisis, global conditions, and regime changes
- Sovereign wealth funds and financial stability
- Islamic Securitization – The Right Way Forward?
- Quo vadis Islamic finance?


















