Q1 A-CLG: Speaker Profile

Steve H. Hanke is a professor of applied economics and founder and codirector of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is director of the Troubled Currencies Project at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow at Cato’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives.

Hanke is also a senior adviser 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, a contributing editor at Central Banking in London, and a contributor at National Review. Hanke is also a member of the Charter Council of the Society for Economic Measurement and of Euromoney Country Risk’s Experts Panel. 

In the past, Hanke has 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 adviser to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress in 1984–88. Hanke 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 adviser 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. 

Hanke has also held senior appointments in the governments of many other countries, including Albania, Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yugoslavia. In 1998, he was named one of the 25 most influential people in the world-by-World Trade Magazine. In 2020, Hanke was named a Knight of the Order of the Flag. 

Hanke is a well‐known currency and commodity trader. Currently, he serves as chairman 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 Currency Boards: Volume 1. Theory and Policy (2020), Currency Boards: Volume 2. Studies on Selected European Countries (2020), Currency Boards for Developing Countries: A Handbook (2021), Public Debt Sustainability: International Perspectives (2022), and The Hong Kong Linked Rate Mechanism: Monetary Lessons for Economic Development (2022).