Richard Portes

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Richard Portes
CBE, FBA
Richard Portes.jpg
Born
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Citizenship United States
United Kingdom [1]
Known forFounding the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); research on European financial integration and sovereign debt
Spouses
  • Barbara Diana Frank (m. 1963; div. 2005)
  • Helene Rey (m. 2006)
Children Jonathan Portes, Alison Portes, Ana Rey-Portes
Parent(s)Herbert Portes
Abra Halperin Portes
Academic background
Alma mater Yale University (BA)
Oxford University (DPhil)
Notes
Richard Portes publications indexed by Google Scholar

Richard David Portes CBE FBA is an American-born British economist known for his work on international macroeconomics, financial regulation, and European integration. He is Professor of Economics at the London Business School.

Contents

Portes is the founder and Honorary President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). He previously served for three decades as Directeur d'Études at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. Portes is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Early life and education

Portes was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Herbert Portes and Abra Halperin Portes. [2] He entered Yale University in 1959 and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1962. [3]

He then went to Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, attending Balliol College, Oxford from 1962 to 1963 and Nuffield College, Oxford from 1963 to 1964. He then returned to Balliol, where he completed his D.Phil. in economics in 1969. He also received an M.A. (Oxon.) in 1965. [1]

Academic career

Portes began his academic career as Official Fellow and Tutor in Economics at Balliol College, Oxford (1965–1969), and later as Assistant Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University (1969–1972). He was offered tenure in 1971 but then moved to the University of London in 1972 as the founding Professor of Economics at Birkbeck College, where he chaired the Department of Economics and served as Dean of the Faculty of Economics. [4]

He joined London Business School in 1995 as Professor of Economics, chairing its Economics Subject Area from 2000 to 2003 and later serving as a Governor from 2010 to 2013. [5] From 2014 to 2017, he was the inaugural holder of the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa Chair in European Economic and Monetary Integration at the European University Institute in Florence. [6] From 2016 to 2025, he was Academic Co-Director of the AQR Asset Management Institute at the London Business School. [7]

He served as part-time Directeur d’Études at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris from 1978 until his retirement from this post in 2008. [8]

In addition, Portes has held visiting appointments on a Guggenheim Fellowship at Harvard University (1977–1978), as Distinguished Global Visiting Professor at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley (1999–2000), and as the Joel Stern Visiting Professor of International Finance at Columbia Business School (2003–2004). [9] He has been a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1980. [10]

Research

Portes’s research spans international finance, international macroeconomics, macroprudential regulation, European integration, and European bond markets. [11] He has written extensively on sovereign debt, international capital flows, transition economies, macroeconomic disequilibrium, and European monetary integration. [12] [13]

His paper with Hélène Rey using gravity models for cross-border equity flows ( Journal of International Economics , 2005) inspired a wide range of subsequent research on the role of distance and information in international capital movements. [14] His study with Richard Baldwin and Joseph Francois on the eastern enlargement of the European Union was widely cited in policy debates prior to the EU expansion. [15] [16]

In work that foreshadowed the 1997 Asian financial crisis, his paper “Anatomy of Financial Crises” (in Portes and Swoboda, Threats to International Financial Stability, 1987) examined the links among debt defaults, exchange-market disturbances, and bank failures. [17]

His work on collective action clauses in sovereign bond contracts (with Barry Eichengreen) proposed a solution to the “holdout” problem in debt renegotiations, which led to the widespread adoption of such clauses in international bond issuances. He was the first (with Georgios Alogoskoufis, 1991) to write on the potential international role of the euro and returned to this theme in a widely cited paper in Economic Policy with Hélène Rey (1998). His recent work with the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) on European financial stability and crypto-assets has also been influential in shaping policy and academic perspectives. [18] In 2025, he highlighted the systemic risks posed by multi-issuer stablecoins in the Financial Times (25 July 2025). [19]

Institutional leadership, policy, and advisory work

Portes was the Founding Director (1983) and later President (1983–2016) of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a European network of academic economists. [20] Portes co-founded the academic journal Economic Policy in 1985 (affiliated with CEPR) and served as its Co-Chair until 2017. [21]

He served as Secretary-General of the Royal Economic Society (RES) from 1992 to 2008—the longest tenure since John Maynard Keynes. [22] He was a founding member of the Euro 50 Group [6] and of the revived Bellagio Group on the International Economy. [7]

Portes has also advised several international and governmental bodies, including the European Commission, IMF, [23] and Bank of England. He served on the General Board of the European Systemic Risk Board from 2016 to 2020, chaired its Advisory Scientific Committee (2017, 2020–2021), [24] and currently co-chairs ESRB expert groups on non-bank financial intermediation and on crypto-assets and decentralised finance. [25] He has been a member of the Group of Economic Policy Advisers to the European Commission presidency, [26] and in the United Kingdom has acted as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee [27] and the House of Lords European Union Committee on issues including the euro and the European Central Bank. [28]

Awards and honours

Personal life

Portes married Barbara Diana Frank in 1963; [37] they divorced in 2005. In 2006, he married economist Hélène Rey. [38] He has three children: Jonathan Portes, Alison Portes, and Ana Rey-Portes. [39]

Notes

  1. 1 2 "RICHARD PORTES". London Business School . Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  2. ↑ "Richard Porter Will Marry Miss Barbara Diana Frank". Nytimes.com.
  3. ↑ "Yale '62 - Alumni Notes - June 2003". Yale62.org.
  4. ↑ "CEPR founder Richard Portes awarded CBE for services to economics". Press. Centre for Economic Policy Research . Retrieved 25 March 2013.
  5. ↑ "Richard Portes". Faculty Pages. London Business School . Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  6. 1 2 "Richard Portes". Florence School of Banking and Finance.
  7. 1 2 "Richard Portes". London Business School. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
  8. ↑ "Annuaire - Richard Portes". EHESS.fr.
  9. ↑ "Richard Portes". International Growth Centre. Retrieved 4 February 2025.
  10. ↑ "Richard Portes". NBER.
  11. ↑ "Richard Portes". London Business School. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  12. ↑ "Richard Portes: Citations and Publications". Google Scholar. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  13. ↑ "Richard Portes: Research Output". IDEAS. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  14. ↑ Portes, Richard; Rey, Hélène (March 2005). "The determinants of cross-border equity flows". Journal of International Economics. 65 (2): 269–296. doi:10.1016/j.jinteco.2004.05.002.
  15. ↑ "Eastern Promise". The Economist. 10 April 1997. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  16. ↑ Baldwin, R.; Francois, J.; Portes, R. (1997). "The costs and benefits of eastern enlargement: the impact on the EU and central Europe" . Economic Policy. 12 (24): 125–176. doi:10.1111/1468-0327.00018. S2CID   14414518 . Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  17. ↑ Podolski, Tad (1988). "Review of Threats to International Financial Stability". International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-). 64 (3): 488–489. doi:10.2307/2622883. ISSN   0020-5850.
  18. ↑ "Crypto-assets and decentralised finance" (PDF). European Union.
  19. ↑ "The stablecoin loophole that could expose the EU". FT.com.
  20. ↑ "Richard Portes". CEPR. 12 April 2018.
  21. ↑ "ECONOMIC POLICY 1985 A European Forum". Oxford Academic.
  22. ↑ "Secretaries-General". Royal Economic Society.
  23. ↑ "The Challenge and Experience of Economic liberalization and Reform" (PDF). IMF.
  24. ↑ "2023 Seventh ESRB Annual conference - Speakers". European Central Bank (in Croatian).
  25. ↑ "Crypto-assets and decentralised finance" (PDF). European Union.
  26. ↑ "The Group of policy advisers to the\nCommission (GOPA) sets up Group of Economic Policy Analysis (GEPA) with top\nEuropean Economists". European Commission.
  27. ↑ "House of Commons - Treasury - Fifth Report". Parliament.uk.
  28. ↑ "European Union Committee 13th Report of Session 2007–08" (PDF). Parliament.uk.
  29. ↑ "Richard Portes CBE FBA". Rhodes Trust.
  30. ↑ "Guggenheim Fellowships: Supporting Artists, Scholars, & Scientists". Gf.org.
  31. ↑ "Current Fellows". Econometric Society.
  32. 1 2 3 "CEPR President receives honorary degree | Centre for Economic Policy Research". CEPR.
  33. ↑ "New Year Honours: Order of the British Empire". The Independent. 31 December 2002.
  34. ↑ "Professor Richard Portes FBA". The British Academy.
  35. ↑ "Fellows". EEA.
  36. ↑ "Honorary Fellows". Balliol College.
  37. ↑ "Barbara Frank Wed To Richard Portes". The New York Times.
  38. ↑ "At home: Hélène Rey". FT.com.
  39. ↑ "Yale '62 - Alumni Notes - January/February 2007". Yale Class of 1962.
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