Contributor : Profile

Pranab Bardhan is Professor of Graduate School at the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

He was educated at Presidency College, Kolkata and Cambridge University, England. He had been at the faculty of MIT, Indian Statistical Institute and Delhi School of Economics before joining Berkeley. He has been Visiting Professor/Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, and London School of Economics. He held the Distinguished Fulbright Siena Chair at the University of Siena, Italy in 2008-9. He is the BP Centennial Professor at London School of Economics for 2010 and 2011.

For an autobiographical essay on his professional life brought out in the online Dictionary of Eminent Social Scientists of Foundation Mattei Dogan in Paris, you may go to the link http://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/bardhan/papers/autobioessay.pdf. 

He has done theoretical and field studies research on rural institutions in poor countries, on political economy of development policies, and on international trade. A part of his work is in the interdisciplinary area of economics, political science, and social anthropology. He was Chief Editor of the Journal of Development Economics for 1985-2003. He was the co-chair of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Network on the Effects of Inequality on Economic Performance for 1996-2007.

He is the author of 12 books and editor of 12 other books, and of more than 120 journal articles including in leading Economics journals (like American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Economic Journal, American Economic Journal, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Oxford Economic Papers, etc.). He has also contributed essays to popular outlets like Scientific American, Financial Times, Project Syndicate, Yale Global Online, Business Standard, Hindustan Times, Economic and Political Weekly, Ananda Bazar Patrika (in Bengali), etc.

His latest book, Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and Indiais published by Princeton University Press; their website for the book is at http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9153.html. He has given public lectures on the theme of the book at different institutions in the world: London School of Economics, Paris School of Economics, Oxford University, University of Warwick, National University of Singapore, University of Manchester, Tsinghua University (Beijing), Hong Kong University, Centre for Policy Research (Delhi), University of Copenhagen, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, Victoria University (New Zealand), IESE Business School at Barcelona, Royal Institute of Internationa Affairs in London, and Indian Statistical Institute, apart from in the US at Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, New York University, World Bank, Emory University, University of Illinois at Carbondale, Asia Society at Houston, Montery Institute of International Studies, Portland State University, Camden Conference in Maine, etc.

For a substantial interview on the book recorded at the London School of Economics, listen to http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/5109. For a longer interview on the book as well as looking back at his professional life, watch the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3QAqlqg1Do

Two collections of his selected essays came out in 2003; one is International Trade, Growth and Development published by Blackwell; and the other, Poverty, Agrarian Structure, and Political Economy in India published by Oxford University Press.

His book, Scarcity, Conflicts and Cooperation: Essays in Political and Institutional Economics of Development , was published by MIT Press in 2005.

A co-edited volume, Globalization and Egalitarian Redistribution was published by Princeton University Press in 2006, followed by another co-edited volume, Inequality,Cooperation, and Environmental Sustainability, also published by Princeton University Press in 2006. A co-edited volume, Decentralization and Local Governance in Developing Countries: A Comparative Perspective was published by MIT Press in 2006.A co-edited volume, The Contested Commons: Conversations between Economists and Anthropologists was published in 2008 by Blackwell.

A graduate-level textbook by Pranab Bardhan and Christopher Udry, Development Microconomics, Oxford University Press, was published in 1999. More information on the book may be found in the publisher's website: http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-877371-4 In 2000 MIT Press published a two-volume Readings in Development Economics, edited by Bardhan and Udry. More information on the book may be found in the publisher's website: http://mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=0262024845

His other notable public lectures and keynote addresses include:

• Radhakrishnan Memorial Lectures at All Souls College, Oxford, 1983
• V.K. Ramaswami Memorial Lecture at Delhi School of Economics, 1997
• ILO Nobel Peace Prize Lecture at Capetown, South Africa, 2000
• Inaugural Max Corden Lecture at the University of Melbourne, Australia, 2003
• The first Luca d'Agliano Lecture in Development Economics in Turin, Italy, 2003
• K.R. Narayanan Oration at the Australian National University, Canberra, 2003
• K.C. Basu Endowed Lecture at the National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata, India, 2004
• Keynote Lecture at the CEPR/BREAD development conference at Istanbul, 2005
• Kalinga Lectures at the N.C. Centre for Development Studies in Bhubaneswar, India, 2005
• Opening Lecture at the CESIFO/BREAD development conference at San Servolo, Italy, 2006
• Silver Jubilee Lecture at the Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad, 2006
• Keynote Lecture at the India Development Foundation conference in New Delhi, 2006
• Brookings/NCAER India Policy Forum Public Lecture in New Delhi, 2006
• Keynote Lecture at development conference at University of Quebec, Montreal, 2007
• DEC Lecture at the World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007
• Plenary lecture at the 2007 Annual meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association at Bogota, Colombia
• TDPE Annual Distinguished Lecture at Syracuse University, 2007
• Fred J. Hansen Distinguished Lecture at San Diego State University, 2007
• Dipak Banerjee Memorial Lecture at Presidency College, Kolkata, India, 2007
• Valedictory address at an international conference on Poverty at A.N.Sinha Institute at Patna, India, 2007
• Public lecture at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester, 2008
• State of the Arts lecture at 2008 Annual meeting of the Canadian Economic Association at Vancouver
• Sukhamoy Chakrabarty Memorial Lecture at Delhi School of Economics, 2009
• Opening lecture at a CEPAL conference on Decentralization at Santiago, Chile, 2009
• Distinguished Lecture at Singapore Economic Review Conference, 2009
• Keynote Lecture at conference on Decentralization at IFPRI, Washington DC, 2010
• Keynote Lecture at IGC Workshop on Trade and Development at Columbia University, 2010
• Bernard Fain Lecture at Brown University, 2010
• Keynote Lecture at Six Decades of Indian Democracy conference at Brown University, 2010
• Keynote lecture at the mid-West Development conference at Madison, Wisconsin, 2011
• B.G. Kumar Memorial Lecture at Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrujm, India, 2011
• Keynote Lecture at Copenhagen Business School, 2011
• Keynote Lecture at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, 2011
• Keynote Lecture at Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, 2012
• Keynote Lecture at Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi, 2012
• Halle Speaker Series Lecture at Emory University, 2012
• S.C. Fang Memorial Lecture at Hong Kong University, 2012
• Distinguished Speaker Series Lecture at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2012