Jong-Wha Lee is a professor of economics and director of the Asiatic Research Institute at Korea University. He served as a senior adviser for international economic affairs to former President of South Korea. He previously served as Chief Economist and Head of the Office of Regional Economic Integration at the Asian Development Bank and an economist at the International Monetary Fund. He has taught at Australian National University, Harvard University and Peking University and served as a consultant to the Harvard Institute for International Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank.
Dr. Lee has written and published extensively on topics relating to human capital, growth, financial crises, and economic integration in leading academic journals such as American Economic Review, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Growth, and Review of Economics and Statistics. He was awarded the Cheongram Prize (best young Korean economist), the Maekyung Economist Award in 1997, and the Dasan Economics Award in 2015. He is also a regular columnist for Project Syndicate and Korea JoongAng Daily.
Dr. Lee obtained his Ph.D. and Master’s degree in Economics from Harvard University, and his Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in economics from Korea University in Seoul.