Imad Moosa obtained a BA in economics and business studies, MA in the economics of financial intermediaries and a PhD in financial economics from the University of Sheffield (UK) in 1975, 1976 and 1986 respectively. He has received formal training in model building, exchange rate forecasting and risk management at the Claremont Economics Institute (USA), Wharton Econometrics (USA), and the International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies (Switzerland). Until 1991, Imad had worked as a financial analyst, financial journalist and a professional economist in banking and finance. As a result, he gained practical experience in foreign exchange, money market operations, new issues, securities portfolios and corporate finance. He was also an economist at the Financial Institutions Division of the Bureau of Statistics at the International Monetary Fund (Washington, DC).

In 1991 he started an academic career by lecturing in economics and finance at the University of Sheffield (UK). In 1994 he joined La Trobe University, where he ended up holding a chair in finance, before joining Monash University as a professor of finance in September 2006. He has published 11 books and over 160 papers in academic journals. His work has appeared in the Journal of Futures Markets, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Quantitative Finance, Journal of Financial Studies, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, IMF Staff Papers, Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics and Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization. He has also written for professional magazines such as the prestigious Euromoney.

Imad has served in a number of advisory positions with private and public institutions, including KPMG, AusAid, US Treasury, Central Bank of Kuwait and the United Nations. In 2003 he was a member of the US Treasury team in charge of the reconstruction of the financial sector of Iraq. In 2009 he took part in studies commissioned by the United Nations and the Arab Planning Institute on the effect of the global financial crisis on oil exporting countries.