Dr. Kevin P. Gallagher is the Director of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center and a Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. He served as the Lead Expert on Multilateral Development Bank Reform to the Brazilian Presidency of the G20, and is a member of the Independent Expert Group on Climate, Debt, and Nature. He is a member of the Task Force on Climate, Development and the International Monetary Fund, a consortium of experts working to advance development-centered climate policy at the IMF with rigorous, empirical research, and a co-chair of the Greening the Belt Road Initiative task force at the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.

Previously, he served as co-chair on the T20 India Task Force on ‘Refueling Growth: Clean Energy and Green Transition’ to the Indian Presidency of the G20, on the Chair’s Council of the United States Export Import Bank on China Competition and as the International Chair of the ‘Greening the BRI Task Force’ for the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). Dr. Gallagher has also served on the T20 Italy Task Force on International Finance, the United Nations Committee for Development Policy, the US Department of State’s Investment Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy and the National Advisory Council on trade policy at the US Environmental Protection Agency. He has been a Visiting or Adjunct Professor at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico; Tsinghua University in China and the Center for State and Society in Argentina.

He is the author or co-author of seven books, his latest ‘The Case for New Bretton Woods‘ was coauthored with Richard Kozul-Wright. Other publications include The China Triangle: Latin America’s China Boom and the Fate of the Washington Consensus, Ruling Capital: Emerging Markets and the Reregulation of Cross-Border Finance; The Clash of Globalizations: Essays on Trade and Development Policy; The Dragon in the Room: China and the Future of Latin American Industrialization (with Roberto Porzecanski); The Enclave Economy: Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development in Mexico’s Silicon Valley (with Lyuba Zarsky); and Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA and Beyond.

By this expert

The Brace is On

Article | Feb 3, 2015

Trade Deals Must Allow for Regulating Finance

Article | Oct 2, 2013

World leaders who are gathering for the APEC summit next week had hoped to be signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The pact would bring together key Pacific-rim countries into a trading bloc that the United States hopes could counter China’s growing influence in the region.

Should China Deregulate Finance?

Article | Jul 11, 2013

Is China is “too big to fail.”?

Featuring this expert

The Case for a New Bretton Woods

Video | Jul 16, 2025

How do we prepare for a world of constant shocks—climate disasters, financial crises, pandemics, conflict, and inequality?

YSI Conference on Debt Sustainability

YSI Event Conference YSI | Apr 28–30, 2023

Discussions on the key conceptual and policy themes for sovereign debt sustainability with a view to proposing possible policy reforms.

5th Annual UNCTAD-YSI Summer School

Challenges and Opportunities of a New International Economic Order

YSI Event Workshop YSI | Aug 1–6, 2022

The 5th UNCTAD YSI Summer School provides an opportunity to explore the Challenges and Opportunities of a New International Economic Order. The school will bring together UNCTAD experts, academics, diplomats, and young scholars from across the globe for lively and stimulating intellectual debates.

Re-orienting Global Finance Towards Ecological and Social Goals

Podcasts Apr 11, 2022

UNCTAD Director Richard Kozul-Wright and Kevin Gallagher, Global Development Policy professor at Boston University, discuss their book, The Case for a New Bretton Woods. Ever since the post-war economic order was dismantled beginning in the 1980s, a re-design of the global economic order has become increasingly urgent in light of the social and ecological crises that we face.