José Piñera
Dr. José Piñera is a Chilean economist, public-policy reformer and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He is the founder and president of the International Center for Pension Reform and co-chairman of Cato’s Project on Social Security Choice. During Chile’s military government, he served as Minister of Labor and Social Security and subsequently as Minister of Mining. He is best known as the principal architect of Chile’s transition to a pension system based on individually funded retirement accounts, as well as for his role in developing major labor-market and mining reforms.
Dr. Piñera earned both his MA and PhD in Economics from Harvard University after completing his undergraduate studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Over several decades, he has advised policymakers around the world on pension design, retirement savings and structural economic reform, becoming an influential international advocate for personal-account pension systems and market-oriented public policy. He has written numerous books, essays and articles, with commentary appearing in publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs and Wired.