Economist · Author · Painter
Three decades at the International Monetary Fund, a lifetime studying Latin America, and a brush never far from hand.
Personal life
Claudio Loser was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in October 1943, to Martín and Ilse, and grew up alongside his older brother, Pinkas. When he was very young, the family moved to Mendoza, the wine country at the foot of the Andes.
It was in Mendoza that he met his wife, Raquel. He studied at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo before leaving for the University of Chicago, where he earned his MA in 1967 and his PhD in economics in 1971. After teaching at the University of Cuyo and at American University and consulting for the Andean Group in Lima, Peru, he joined the International Monetary Fund in Washington in 1972.
Claudio and Raquel raised their children, Martín and Michelle, in Washington, D.C. Today he is the proud grandfather of five: Jake, Jordan, Max, Sammy and Jenna.
He loves to travel, to be out in nature, above all in the mountains, and to paint. Most of all, he loves meeting and talking with new people from every kind of background.
Career
Raised in Mendoza, where he studied at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo.
Following an MA from Chicago in 1967 and a degree from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo.
Begins in the Exchange and Trade Restrictions Department, working on external debt and program conditionality, with missions across Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.
Holds a series of senior positions in the department through the Latin American debt crisis.
Leads the IMF's work across 34 member countries in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, one of the largest departments at the Fund, through November 2002.
Joins the Washington forum for policymakers on Western Hemisphere affairs, and becomes a regular contributor to its Latin America Advisor.
Teaches Latin American economic development, and lectures at the U.S. State Department's Foreign Service Institute.
Advises governments, development banks and companies on emerging-market growth, working with CAF, the Asian Development Bank, JICA and JBIC. Advisor to the Emerging Markets Forum.
“Claudio Loser has given excellent service to the IMF during his distinguished career at the Fund.”
Horst Köhler, IMF Managing Director, 2002
Works
Latest book
A study of why a region of enormous promise has lagged its peers, written from decades of first-hand work with its governments, and an argument for how it can do better.
“Loser is a splendid guide.”
Michael Shifter, Inter-American Dialogue
The book about the crisis
The passionate debate between a journalist and one of the key men of the Fund in the nineties
In the wake of Argentina's 2001 crisis, journalist Ernesto Tenembaum and Claudio, who had led the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department through those years, set out to understand together what had happened. Over months of emails they traded questions, arguments and answers about the decade that led to the crisis.
They did not always agree, and that is what gives the book its value. Each pushed the other with candor and respect, and the result is an open, good-faith dialogue between two very different vantage points. Claudio explains the Fund's thinking from the inside, reflects frankly on what could have been done better, and shares his view of the forces at work within Argentina. Readers responded: the book spent more than three months among Argentina's most-read nonfiction titles.
IMF Occasional Paper No. 99 · 1992
Edited with Eliot Kalter, International Monetary Fund.
In the media
For more than two decades since leaving the Fund, Claudio has been a sought-after voice on Latin America's economies, interviewed regularly on television, radio and in print across the Americas and Europe. A selection:
Art
Away from the economics, Claudio paints. He loves painting wildlife and natural landscapes, from tigers, leopards and horses to the mountains and valleys of the Andean foothills, in thick, textured brushwork and bold color. Here are some of his works.