Warren Coats has a BA degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley and
MA and Ph.D degrees in economics from the University of Chicago. After five years as an
assistant professor of economics at the University of Virginia, he joined the IMF in 1976. He
became chief of the SDR division in the Finance Department in 1983 and was Assistant
Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department (MCM) when he retired in May
2003 to become a Director of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (2003-10). Dr. Coats
was a visiting economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 1979
and was seconded to the World Bank for one year to help write the 1989 World Development
Report on Financial Systems.

From the SDR division of the Finance Department, Dr. Coats rejoined what is now MCM in
the IMF in January 1992 and almost immediately led a technical assistance mission to
Bulgaria followed by back-to-back missions to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in April of that
year. Thus began an intensive program of developing new central banks and currencies that
has lasted beyond his retirement. Dr. Coats has led more than 70 missions that have produced
practical advice and assistance to central banks, often under crisis conditions. These include
missions to Afghanistan, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Czech Republic, Egypt, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyz Republic,
Malta, Moldova, Nigeria, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Turkey, the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe. He supervised the establishment of new
central banks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the
reestablishment, transformation, and development of the payment and banking systems in
Kosovo, and helped Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and later Bosnia and Herzegovina introduce
their own currencies.

Dr. Coats’ work on banking sector issues in Moldova, Bulgaria, Croatia, Turkey and
Yugoslavia has provided him with the practical experience reflected in his several articles on
banking sector soundness issues (including several papers on Bank Insolvency Law). He has
also written on various monetary theory and policy issues, including electronic money and
inflation targeting. He edited a book on Inflation Targeting in Transition Economies
published by the IMF and the Czech National Bank and co edited a book on the same subject
published by the Czech National Bank in 2003. His book, One Currency for Bosnia:
Creating of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was published in August 2007 by
Jameson Press, Ill. His books on Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and the Former Soviet Union
are available on Amazon: Books by Warren-Coats

After retiring from the IMF, Dr. Coats was Sr. Monetary Policy Advisor to the Central Bank
of Iraq in 2004-5, helped South Sudan prepare to issue and manage its own currency when it
became independent on July 9, 2011 (with Deloitte/USAID) and was a consulting member of
the IMF program team for Afghanistan from Sept 2010 to Dec 2013. He was a Director of
the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority from 2003-10 and a member of the Editorial Board
of the Cayman Financial Review 2010 - 17. In March 2019 he was named the Central
Banking Journal’s first recipient of its award for Outstanding Contribution for Capacity
Building at central banks. He is currently a fellow of Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts
and Sciences, Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business
Enterprise.