Åslund served as an economic adviser to the governments of Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine and from 2003 was director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In 2013, neoconservative David Frum wrote that "Anders Aslund at the Peterson Institute is one of the world’s leading experts on the collapse of the planned Soviet economy.

On 22 April 1990 Åslund published a controversial article on Dagens Nyheter, drawing parallels between the collapsing communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the social democratic policies in Sweden.

[4] He argued that Sweden had too large a public sector; supported communist dictatorships, such as Cuba, in the Third World; and had excessive state intervention in all areas of life.

[6][7] From November 1991 to January 1994, Åslund worked with Jeffrey Sachs and David Lipton as a senior advisor to the Russian reform government under President Boris Yeltsin and Acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar.