Contributor : Profile

Nishith Prakash is a Professor of Public Policy and Economics, with a joint appointment with the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Department of Economics at Northeastern University, Boston. Before joining Northeastern University, he was an associate professor of economics with a joint position with the Department of Economics and the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Born and raised in Bihar, India, he earned a BA (honours) in economics from Shivaji College, an MA in economics from Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, and a PhD in economics from the University of Houston, Texas. He was a post-doctoral research associate at Cornell University. He has previously held Visiting Assistant Professor positions at Ohio University, and Dartmouth College, and he has been a Visiting Fellow at Yale University, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, and Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. 

He is a Research Fellow at CESifo, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Households in Conflict Network (HiCN), Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) Network Researcher, Global Labor Organization (GLO), and Member of Insights on Immigration and Development (INSIDE-SPAIN). He is also currently serving on the Editorial Board of the journal PLOS ONE and Associate Editor at the Journal of Development Economics.

His research revolves around empowering human capital in low-income countries. His primary research interests include development, political economy, public policy, the economics of education, and behavioral economics. Throughout his academic pursuit, Professor Prakash has focused on the relationship between government policies and economic development and harnessed rigorous empirical evidence to study the impact of policies and institutions in enabling inclusive growth. He has experience in conducting surveys in developing countries, working with large-scale observational and administrative data sets, and conducting field experiments (RCTs), and has worked closely with the Education Department (in Bihar, Nepal, Zanzibar, and Zambia), the State Police (in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana), the Health Department (in Bihar), the Ministry of Home Affairs (Government of India), and the World Bank. His teaching interests include Development Economics, Applied Econometrics, and the Economics of Gender and Inequality.

Professor Prakash’s research has been featured in The Economist, BBC, World Bank Development Impact Blog, World Economic Forum, Financial Times, Forbes, The Statesman, The Atlantic, The Indian Express, The Hindu, The Times of India, and other national and international newspapers.