Mumbai, Dec. 28: The government today appointed Viral V. Acharya, a New York University (NYU) economics professor who once called himself "poor man's Raghuram Rajan", as the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

Acharya, 42, a professor in the department of finance at NYU's Stern School of Business, comes to Mint Street with impressive credentials as he fills the post that fell vacant after Urjit Patel took over as the RBI governor with effect from September 4.

Acharya, who has been appointed for a term of three years, will assume charge on January 20, 2017. He will look after the monetary policy and research cluster, the RBI said. The other three deputy governors are S.S. Mundra, N.S. Vishwanathan and R. Gandhi.

The RBI has provision for four deputy governors, two of whom are appointed from outside, while the other two are generally from within.

According to the NYU website, Acharya's research interests are in regulation of banks and financial institutions, corporate finance, credit risks and asset pricing, besides sovereign debt and international finance.

His appointment comes at a time the RBI is facing a lot of criticism for frequently changing rules on cash deposits and exchanges at banks after the demonetisation move on November 8.

Like Rajan, Acharya has been a strong supporter of the independence of central banks. He has often praised Rajan for his works and once said "Raghu has been a great source of inspiration for me".

While giving a Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics plenary lecture in 2013, Acharya had narrated an incident when someone had asked him on a flight whether he was Raghuram Rajan, after seeing him, an Indian, with papers on banking and crisis.

He quipped that was the day he realised that if he had Rajan as a "role model" and could get even 5-10 per cent of him, he could easily pass off as "poor man's Raghuram Rajan" on flights.

Acharya has also co-authored at least three papers with the former RBI governor.

In September 2015, in a paper with Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian of the Indian School of Business, Acharya had suggested that over the long run, some public sector banks could be privatised. The paper had pointed out that the onus was on the government to remove the ills affecting public banks through radical reforms.

A multi-faceted individual, Acharya's hobbies include tennis, running, chess, poetry, singing and composing Indian semi-classical music.