[3] He earned engineering degree from Ecole Centrale Paris (1970), Certificat Supérieur d'Études from Institut Supérieur de Statistiques des Universités de Paris (1972), and PhD in economics from Harvard University (1978).
Since 1995 he is Professor of Economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
He has served as advisor to various governments (Russia, Cyprus, France) as well as to numerous organisations such the IMF, the World Bank, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Asian Development Bank.
He served as Director of the International Macroeconomics Programme at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
He has worked extensively on money especially the European Monetary System, the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union, financial crisis, and capital mobility and economic transformation of former communist economies.