US University professor Viral V Acharya appointed RBI deputy governor

New Delhi: The government on Wednesday appointed Viral V Acharya, a professor of economics at New York University, as new deputy governor at the Reserve Bank of India.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet cleared the appointment for three years. The RBI had a vacancy for deputy governor after Urjit Patel was promoted to Governor earlier this year. The RBI currently has three deputy governors namely S S Mundra, N S Vishwanathan and R Gandhi.

The statement did not mention which portfolio Acharya would be assigned. Patel had headed the prestigious monetary policy, which is now overseen by RBI deputy governor R Gandhi as part of a widened remit.

Acharya is known for his research in theoretical and empirical analysis of systemic risks of the financial sector, its regulation and genesis in government-induced distortions, according to the profile on the NYU website.
The research areas also span across credit and liquidity risks, agency-theoretic foundations as well as their general equilibrium consequences, it says.

Acharya is is the C V Starr Professor of Economics in the Department of Finance at the New York University Stern School of Business (NYU-Stern).

An alumnus of IIT, Mumbai, with a degree of Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering in 1995 and PhD in Finance from NYU-Stern in 2001, Acharya was with London Business School (2001-08) and served as the Academic Director of the Coller Institute of Private Equity at LBS (2007-09) and a Senior Houblon-Normal Research Fellow at the Bank of England (Summer 2008).

With Agency Inputs