Jaejoon Woo

Academic Degrees

• PhD, Economics, Harvard University, 1999
• MA, Economics, Yonsei University, 1992
• BA, Economics, Yonsei University, 1990

Biography

Jaejoon Wo​o is an associate professor of economics at the Driehaus College of Business. His distinguished professional career encompasses more than 20 years of experience conducting high-caliber economic research and analyzing global macro issues as well as market and industry trends in Korea and emerging markets (EM) Asia for top international organizations, a global investment bank and academia.

He served as chief Korea economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) from 2015 to 2017 and has published more than 145 market-oriented research notes on Korea and ​EM Asia. His Asia economist team attained the No. 2 and No. 3 top global spots in the Institutional Investor Survey for 2016 and 2017, respectively.

From 2009 to 2014, he was a senior economist (with permanent staff status) at the International Monetary Fund, where he worked on macro-fiscal issues at the height of the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. Among others, his paper on public debt and growth (co-authored with Kumar) attracted significant attention from policy circles, academia and news media. Previously, he also twice held an economist position at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris in 2000-2002 and 2009. His paper (co-authored with with Scarpetta, Hemmings and Tressel) on firm dynamics and productivity was covered in the Economic Focus section of The Economist on May 23, 2002.

His research areas include macroeconomics; growth and productivity; sovereign debt and fiscal policy; political economy; social polarization; inequality; international economic integration; Korea and EM Asia. He has published four books and 33 articles so far, excluding the 145-plus publications he produced at BAML. His papers have been published in leading peer-reviewed economics journals, such as Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Public Economics, European Economic Review, Economica, Journal of Development Economics, Economic Inquiry, IMF Economic Review, and Fiscal Studies, as well as in the IMF, OECD, ADB, and BoK working paper series and books. His research papers have been cited more than 3,800 times (per Google Scholar). His research works and opinions have been featured and/or cited in the news media, including by the The Economist, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Nikkei Asian Review, Yonhap News, MK (Maekyung), Korea Daily, Korea Times and Edaily.

Woo has been a topic editor of Journal of Risk and Financial Management since 2021. He was an associate editor of International Economic Journal from 2010-2018. He was appointed a member of the International Finance Development Council for Ministry of Strategy and Finance, South Korea, in 2016-2018.

Besides DePaul, Woo has taught at Harvard, Helsinki School of Economics, Sciences Po in France, and DePaul MBA programs in Bahrain, Czech Republic and Taiwan.