Contributor : Profile
Karthik Muralidharan is a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, where he also holds the Tata Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Economics.
Born and raised in India, he earned an A.B. in economics (summa cum laude) from Harvard, an M.Phil. in economics from Cambridge (UK), and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), an Affiliate at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), a Member of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) network, an Affiliate at the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), and a Research Affiliate with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA).
Prof. Muralidharan's primary research interests include development, public, and labor economics. Specific topics of interest include education, health, and social protection; measuring quality of public service delivery; program evaluation; and improving the effectiveness of public spending (with a focus on developing countries). Courses taught include undergraduate and graduate classes in development economics, program evaluation, and the economics of education.
Posts by Karthik Muralidharan
Improving School Governance at Scale: A Randomised Evaluation of the Madhya Pradesh School Quality Assessment Programme
Weak governance is a critical constraint in delivering quality education in developing countries. This project conducts a randomised evaluation of one of the most ambitious recent attempts by a develo...
- Karthik Muralidharan Abhijeet Singh
- 31 October, 2016
- IGC Research on India
Charting a course for the Indian economy
Karthik Muralidharan (Associate Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego) speaks with Arvind Subramanian (Chief Economic Adviser, Government of India) on a broad set of issues rang...
- Karthik Muralidharan Arvind Subramanian
- 05 August, 2015
- Videos
Big and small ideas in development economics: Theory, evidence and practice
Karthik Muralidharan, Associate Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego speaks with Kaushik Basu, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, World Bank and former Chief Economic A...
- Kaushik Basu Karthik Muralidharan
- 03 February, 2015
- Videos
Building state capacity for better programme implementation: Lessons from the Andhra Pradesh Smartcard Programme
Biometric payment systems are posited to reduce leakages in public welfare programmes but there is limited evidence on their effectiveness. This column presents evidence on the impact of the Andhra P...
- Karthik Muralidharan Paul Niehaus Sandip Sukhtankar
- 03 December, 2014
- Articles
A conversation on Bihar
I4I Guest Editor Karthik Muralidharan (Associate Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego) speaks with Anjani Kumar Singh (Chief Secretary, Government of Bihar) during the IGC Grow...
- Karthik Muralidharan Anjani Singh
- 03 November, 2014
- Perspectives
Building an inclusive and high-performing school system
Clause 12 of the Right to Education Act aims to reduce social stratification in education by requiring private schools to reserve one-fourth of their seats for economically weaker students, with the ...
- Karthik Muralidharan
- 29 January, 2014
- Articles
Understanding the relative effectiveness of government and private schools in India
Data suggests a steady increase in the share of students attending private schools in rural India. This column analyses data from the largest and longest evaluation of a school choice programme in In...
- Karthik Muralidharan
- 22 January, 2014
- Articles
An evidence-based proposal to achieve universal quality primary education in India
It is well established that learning levels in Indian primary schools are unacceptably low. This column proposes a strategy for achieving universal functional literacy and numeracy for all primary sch...
- Karthik Muralidharan
- 25 November, 2013
- Articles
Cycling to School: Increasing High School Enrolment for Girls in Bihar
This project studies the impact of an innovative Programme in the Indian state of Bihar that aimed to reduce the gender gap in secondary school enrolment by providing girls who continued to secondary ...
- Karthik Muralidharan Nishith Prakash
- 01 June, 2013
- IGC Research on India
Using evidence for better policy: The case of primary education in India
While India has achieved considerable success in increasing primary school enrolment and improving input-based measures of school quality over the past 10 years, learning outcomes continue to be abysm...
- Karthik Muralidharan
- 18 March, 2013
- Articles