Contributor : Profile

From 2019 he is the Director of UNU-WIDER, and he is a professor of development economics at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester.

Kunal Sen was educated at Elphinstone College, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and Rutgers University, USA. He is currently Professor of Development Economics at the Institute of Development Policy and Management (IDPM), University of Manchester, UK, and Associate Director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute. His main research areas are economic growth, the analysis of poverty and labour markets, international trade and finance.  His current research examines firm dynamics in the informal sector, the political economy determinants of economic growth, and the role of institutions in economic development. Some of the current research is being carried out within the DFID-UK funded Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) Research Centre, based in the University of Manchester (www.effective-states.org), of which he is the Joint Research Director. Until 2011, Professor Sen was the Chair of the British Association for South Asian Studies, one of the world’s largest learned societies on South Asia. Professor Sen’s recent books are State-Business Relations and Economic Development in Africa and India, London: Routledge 2012; Trade Policy, Inequality and Performance in Indian Manufacturing, London: Routledge 2008, International Competitiveness, Investment and Finance: A Case-study of India (with A.G. Kumar and R. Vaidya), London: Routledge 2003, and Saving, Investment and Growth in India (with P. Athukorala), Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. He has been awarded the Sanjaya Lall Prize in 2006 and Dudley Seers Prize in 2003 for his publications. He is member of the ESRC Peer Review College, and South Asia Area Panel of the British Academy, as well as Research Fellow of IZA, Bonn.