Luis Felipe Céspedes is a Full Professor at the School of Economics and Business of the Universidad de Chile and a Board Member (Consejero) of the Central Bank of Chile.

He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from New York University (NYU) and a professional degree in Business and Economics (Ingeniero Comercial), with majors in Economics and Business Administration, from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

From March 2014 to August 2017, he served as Minister of Economy, Development and Tourism of Chile. Between 2009 and 2011, he was Chief of Economic Research at the Central Bank of Chile, and from 2006 to 2009 he served as Economic Policy Coordinator and Chief of Advisors at the Ministry of Finance of Chile. Earlier in his career, he worked as a Senior Economist in the Economic Research Department of the Central Bank of Chile and as an Economist in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund, and from 1995 to 1997 he was an advisor to the Ministry of Finance.

He was a Full Professor at the Business School of the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez until 2019. He has been a visiting scholar in the research departments of the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as in the Department of Economics at Rutgers University, and a Visiting Professor at Columbia University. He has also taught in the Department of Industrial Engineering and the Department of Economics at the Universidad de Chile, and at the Institute of Economics of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Between 2009 and 2011, he was editor of the academic journal Economía Chilena and of the Central Bank of Chile’s Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies series. He has served as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, and from 2019 to 2025 he was a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development.

He has published extensively in leading international academic journals on macroeconomics, monetary and exchange rate policy, fiscal policy, real exchange rates, the balance of payments, and financial constraints. He has also contributed chapters to several books on macroeconomics and international finance.

He received the Best Professor Award for the Executive MBA at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in 2013 and 2014, and the Business School’s Best Researcher Award at the same institution in 2014. He received the Best Undergraduate Teacher Award of the Department of Economics at the Universidad de Chile in 2021 and 2025, and the Best Graduate Teacher Award in 2025.