World Bank Chief Economist: Kaushik Basu
Kaushik Basu is Senior Vice President for Development Economics and World BankChief Economist. He was until recently the Chief Economic Adviser to theGovernment of India, at the Ministry of Finance—essentially the “Chief Economist”of the Government of India.Mr. Basu was Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of InternationalStudies at Cornell University in the interim period between his appointment with theGovernment of India and the World Bank. He has served as Chairman of Cornell’sDepartment of Economics, Director of Cornell’s Center for Analytic Economics andDirector of Cornell’s Program for Comparative Economic Development.Earlier Mr. Basu was Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics,where in 1992 he founded the Centre for Development Economics in Delhi and was its first Executive Director.He is also a founding member of the Madras School of Economics. Mr. Basu has also held visiting positions atthe Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the London School of Economics, where he was DistinguishedVisitor in 1993. He has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, Princeton University and M.I.T. He holdsa PhD in economics from the London School of Economics.Mr. Basu is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and has been awarded India’s National Mahalanobis MemorialAward. He is the outgoing President of the Human Development and Capabilities Association, which wasfounded by Amartya Sen. He has held advisory posts with the ILO, the World Bank, the Reserve Bank of Indiaand was, for several years, member of the steering committee of the Expert Group of Development Issues setup by the Swedish Government. He has also been a member of the Board of Directors of the Exim Bank ofIndia.He is Editor of the journal Social Choice and Welfare, and served or serves on numerous Editorial Boards,including the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of PublicEconomics, and the World Bank Economic Review.Mr. Basu’s contributions to economics span development economics, welfare economics, industrial organizationand public economics. He has published widely, including 160 papers in refereed journals and scholarlyvolumes. His authored books include Analytical Development Economics (1997, MIT Press), Prelude to PoliticalEconomy: A Study of the Social and Political Foundations of Economics (2000, Oxford University Press) and OfPeople, Of Places: Sketches from an Economist’s Notebook (1994, Oxford University Press). His most recentbooks are Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics published by Princeton University Pressand Penguin, and An Economist’s Miscellany, published by Oxford University Press.Mr. Basu has also contributed popular articles to magazines and newspapers, such as The New York Times,Scientific American, Economic and Political Weekly, India Today and Business Standard. For several years hewrote a column for BBC News Online. He has appeared on various television programs including CNN (USA),NDTV and CNBC (India) and BBC.In May 2008 he was awarded one of India’s highest civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan, by the President ofIndia.Mr. Basu is the second World Bank Chief Economist from a developing country and the first from India.Association.