Atif Mian

Atif Mian is the John H. Laporte, Jr. Class of 1967 Professor of Economics at Princeton University and director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Mian’s research centers on macroeconomics, finance, and development.

Mian’s ongoing research studies the root causes of the economy’s long-run dependence on debt and the risks the debt supercycle poses for global stability. It develops a saving-glut theory of debt, showing how structural imbalances and supply-side constraints create dependence on indebted demand and large fiscal deficits, distorting both monetary and fiscal policy. The work also shows how debt dependence pushes up asset valuations, deepens financial fragility, and threatens broader economic stability. He brings micro-empirical data and techniques into business-cycle macroeconomics, showing how weak risk sharing between borrowers and creditors can turn financial distress into broader economic instability.

His book House of Debt (University of Chicago Press, 2014), co-authored with Amir Sufi, received wide global acclaim for its originality and policy implications; The New York Times described it as “rewriting the story of the recession.” IMF Finance & Development included Mian in its “Generation Next” of economists “shaping the way we think about the global economy.”

In 2007, Mian co-founded the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), a nonprofit institute dedicated to promoting economic research, teaching, and innovation. Research at CERP is regularly published in leading economics journals, and the center currently employs more than 500 research and professional staff working on over 40 active projects.

Mian is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a recipient of the R.K. Cho Prize in Economics, in addition to his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He received his bachelor’s degree in Mathematics with Computer Science and his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.