Ernest Aryeetey is a nonresident senior fellow with the Africa Growth Initiative in the Global Economy and Development program of The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He is also vice chancellor of the University of Ghana, where he has been on the research faculty since 1986.

Aryeetey was the director of the Brookings Africa Growth Initiative from 2009 - 2010. He has also been temporary lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1993); visiting professor at Yale University Department of Economics (1999); and the Cornell visiting professor, Department of Economics at Swarthmore College (2001-2002). He studied economics at the University of Ghana and obtained a Ph.D. at the University of Dortmund, Germany in 1985.

Ernest Aryeetey's research focuses on the economics of development with interest in institutions and their role in development, regional integration, economic reforms, financial systems in support of development and small enterprise development. He is well-known for his work on informal finance and microfinance in Africa. He has consulted for various international agencies on a number of development and political economy subjects. He has presented seminar papers at departments of economics and planning in such universities as Ohio State University, the University of Manchester, Oxford University, Harvard University, New York University, University of Copenhagen, University of California, Los Angeles, Georgetown University, and Sophia University, Tokyo.

Ernest Aryeetey has published three books, five edited volumes, 32 journal articles and many working and discussion papers. Among his publications are Financial Integration and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (Routledge 1998), Economic Reforms in Ghana: The Miracle and the Mirage (James Currey 2000) and Testing Global Interdependence (Edward Elgar 2007). He was the second recipient of the Michael Bruno award of the World Bank to become a visiting scholar for May-October 1998.

Ernest Aryeetey was the president of the Ghana Institute of Planners (1998-2000) and is a current member of the American Economics Association. He is also a member of the boards of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and the Global Development Network. He is a member of the Programme Committee and resource person of the African Economic Research Consortium, Nairobi. Aryeetey was a managing editor of the Journal of African Economies and is the acting editor of the New Legon Observer.