Mauricio Cárdenas is a distinguished non-resident fellow at CGD. He is an economist who served as Colombia’s minister of finance and public credit from 2012 to 2018, and is currently a Visiting Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, and joined SIPA as a part-time visiting professor for Spring 2019. He is teaching a course on economic policymaking in developing countries.

As finance minister, Cárdenas oversaw a successful adjustment program that preserved high investment rates and produced reductions in poverty and inequality during the oil shock of the mid-2010s. He also led a fiscal reform that cut payroll taxes, which was followed by the creation of many new jobs. Cárdenas became finance minister immediately after serving for a year as minister of mines and energy. Earlier in his career he led Colombia’s national planning department, its ministry of transport, and its ministry of economic development.