Professor Tan Kong Yam is presently a professor of economics at the Nanyang Technological University. He is a board member of Changi Airport Group.  

From 1985-88, he was an assistant director in the Monetary Authority of Singapore in charge of exchange rate policy. He was the chief assistant to Dr Goh Keng Swee, the former deputy prime minister of Singapore invited by Mr Deng Xiaoping to advise China on economic development strategy (1985-95). From June 2002 to June 2005, he was a senior economist at the World Bank office in Beijing where he worked on the 11th Five Year Plan with the State Council. Prior to that, he was the chief economist of the Singapore government (1999-2002) and head of department of strategy and policy at the National University of Singapore business school. He was also the director of the Asia Competitiveness Institute at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (2010-2020) 

He is a graduate of Princeton (1975-79, class of 1931 scholar, Paul Volcker Thesis prize) and Stanford University (1980-83), where he completed his Masters and PhD in three years.   

His research interests are in international trade and finance, economic and business trends in the Asia-Pacific region and economic reforms in China. He has published twelve books and numerous articles in major international journals. He has also consulted for many organisations including Temasek, GIC, ExxonMobil, Citigroup, IBM, ATT, BP, ABN-AMRO, and China Construction Bank.