Robert Madsen

Senior Economist, Hale Global Economics

Robert Madsen is an expert on global economics and politics who advises financial institutions, corporations, governments, and monetary authorities on long-run trends as well as emergencies around the world. From 2004 to 2015 he was a Senior Fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies. Over that decade he also served with several of Japan’s most prestigious businessmen on the Executive Council at Unison Capital, that country’s premier private equity group; and as a consultant to one of the “super-major”oil companies, which he helped with global and regional forecasting as well as the 2008-2009 financial crisis, fiscal and monetary policies in the major economies, Chinese politics and economics, European debt and banking, and the future of the Eurozone. He has additionally worked as Senior Economist and Advisor at Asia Alternatives, a fund-of funds; and a retained consultant to Caxton Corporation, a macroeconomic hedge fund.

From 1997 to 2013, Dr. Madsen wrote the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Japan Country Reports and contributed to that company’s analysis of China, broader East Asia,and the world. He also did substantial modeling of national debt sustainability, the future of Chinese GDP growth, and other topics amenable to quantitative analysis. Before joining MIT in 2004, he was a Fellow at Stanford University’s Asia Pacific Research Center, Asia Strategist at Soros Private Funds Management, and a limited partner and advisor to the Robert M. Bass Group on its investments in Japan. Still earlier, as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company he focused on international finance,the EP&C industry, and Overseas Chinese business networks in Southeast Asia.

Robert Madsen graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and then entered Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he earned a master’s degree, with distinction, and a doctorate in international relations. He also holds a J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School and is a member of the California State Bar. Having spent over a dozen years abroad, he is fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese.


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