Michael Kumhof (born 15 October 1962) is a German researcher and economist. He is thesenior research advisor in the Bank of England's research hub.[1] He is most known for his research into the financial system, income inequalities and the oil supply.
In his previous work at the IMF, he was responsible for developing theInternational Monetary Fund's Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal Model (aDynamic stochastic general equilibrium model). The model is used for IMF policy and scenario analyses in multilateral and bilateral surveillance, for theWorld Economic Outlook, and forG20 work. It is also used by severalcentral banks.[2]
As a researcher, one of Kumhof's most noticed publications is the IMF working paperThe Chicago Plan Revisited, in which he and co-author Jaromir Benes use modern tools to analyse theChicago plan, a collection ofbanking reforms suggested byUniversity of Chicago economists in the wake of theGreat Depression. It has been called IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers.[3]
Other noticeable publications are: the IMF working paper "Inequality, Leverage and Crises: The Case of Endogenous Default", in which the authors Kumhof et al. studies how crises can arise as a result of increasing income inequalities;
And the IMF working paper "The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology", in which the authors presents a new model for forecasting oil prices and oil output, based on both the geological and technological view, and it performs far better than existing empirical models, one of the more important conclusions is that they predict a near doubling of oil prices in the next decade. Ignoring the peak oil issue would be "highly unscientific, even irresponsible", says Michael Kumhof.[4]
In February 2016 Kumhof was added to the editorial board ofLedger, the first peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated tocryptocurrency andblockchain technology research.[5] The journal covers aspects ofmathematics,computer science,engineering,law,economics andphilosophy that relates to cryptocurrencies such asbitcoin.[6][7]
