Gustavo Henrique de Barroso Franco (born April 10, 1956, in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian economist. Former Governor of the Brazilian Central Bank, is best known for being one of the "fathers" of the Real Plan, the 1994 monetary reform that ended hyperinflation in Brazil. He teaches economics at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro since 1986. He is also a businessman, consultant and has served on many boards. He founded Rio Bravo Investimentos where he works as Senior Advisor. He has written several books, academic papers and contributes regularly to newspapers and magazines. Early life and studies Franco was born in Rio de Janeiro on April 10, 1956. His mother Maria Isabel Barbosa de Barroso Franco, was from Teófilo Otoni, state of Minas Gerais, and his father, Guilherme Arinos Lima Verde de Barroso Franco, was born in Itacoatiara, at the backlands of the state of Amazonas. Guilherme Arinos made a career at Banco do Brasil and during the war started a lifelong friendship and association to President Getúlio Vargas. Arinos was a member of the first board of directors of the Brazilian National Development Bank, BNDES, and later, at the private sector, was a high ranked executive of Volkswagen do Brasil and one of the founders of Banco Garantia. Gustavo Franco attended Colégio São Vicente de Paulo in Rio de Janeiro and Colégio Notre Dame de Sion in 1960/1974. He obtained a bachelor's (1975–1979) and master's (1983) degree in economics at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), where he developed interests in economic history and macroeconomics. At PUC-Rio he had his first job as teaching assistant working with Edmar Bacha, then preparing a macroeconomic textbook, self-defined as of a neo-structuralist approach, and later to become very popular in Brazil, with several editions Winston Fritsch was his advisor in his M. A. thesis on the topic of financial euphoria and crash in the early years of the Brazilian Republic (1889-1890) and the attempts at monetary reform in connection either adhering to the gold standard or, alternatively to experience with fiat currency models, as proposed by Ruy Barbosa. His M. A. thesis was approved cum landae in 1982 and in 1983 won the prestigious "Prêmio BNDES de Economia" for the M. A. thesis in Brazil. This work was published as a book titled Monetary reform and instability during the republican transition ("Reforma monetária e instabilidade durante