Professor Li is a professor of economics at Korea University. He once served as a senior advisor on international economic affairs to the former president of South Korea. He also served as the chief economist of the Asian Development Bank and the head of the Office of Regional Economic Integration, as well as an economist at the International Monetary Fund. Dr. Li holds a master's degree and a doctorate in economics from Harvard University. Later, he taught at the Australian National University, Harvard University, and Peking University. He also served as a consultant for the Harvard Institute for International Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank.
He has published papers on topics such as human capital, growth, financial crises, and economic integration in well-known academic journals, including American Economic Review, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Growth, and Review of Economics and Statistics. He won the Cheongram Economics Prize (Best Young Economist in South Korea) in 1997, the Maekyung Economist Prize, and the Dasan Economics Prize in 2015. He is a columnist for Project Syndicate and the JoongAng Daily of South Korea.