Carmen M. Reinhart (née Castellanos, born October 7, 1955) is a Cuban-American economist and the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School.

[8] According to Research Papers in Economics (RePec), Reinhart is ranked among the top economists worldwide, based on publications and scholarly citations.

In December 2018, Reinhart received the King Juan Carlos Prize in Economics and Nabe's Adam Smith Award.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Reinhart arrived in the United States on January 6, 1966, at the age of 10, with her mother and father and three suitcases.

Outside of Reinhart's professional activities, she has received compensation for conference-related and speaking engagements, advisory boards, as well as writing and royalties.

[11] In the June 2023 Graduation Ceremonies at University of St Andrews, Reinhart was awarded Doctor of Laws (LLD),[12] in recognition of her major contribution to economics.

Her work is featured in the financial press, including The Economist,[13] Newsweek,[14] The Washington Post,[15] and The Wall Street Journal.

[18] Fellow economist Alan Blinder credits both Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff with describing highly relevant aspects of the 2008 financial institution near-meltdown and resulting serious recession.

[19] Crediting the two economists, Alan Blinder writes that recovering from a “Reinhart-Rogoff recession“ may require debt forgiveness, either directly or indirectly by encouraging somewhat higher than normal inflation.

[21][22] A review by Herndon, Ash, and Pollin of her widely cited paper with Rogoff, "Growth in a Time of Debt", argued that "coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics lead to serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies in the post-war period".