[5] In 2014, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified Atif as one of twenty-five young economists who it expects will shape the world's thinking about the global economy in the future.
[6] Later, he pursued engineering and received a scholarship to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the age of 17.
[16][17] Atif is the author of the critically acclaimed book[18] House of Debt (with Amir Sufi, University of Chicago Press, 2014).
[19][20] The book argues that debt caused the Great Recession—rather than failing banks, as the Bush and Obama administrations had diagnosed.
[22] In 2014, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified Atif as one of twenty-five young economists who it expects will shape the world's thinking about the global economy in the future.