Pranab Bardhan

Pranab Bardhan (born 11 September 1939) is an Indian economist who has taught and worked in the United States since 1979. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Education Bardhan received his bachelor's degree at Presidency College, Kolkata in 1958, his master's at University of Calcutta in 1960, and his doctorate at Cambridge University in 1966 with a dissertation entitled Economic Growth and the Pattern of International Trade and Investment: A Study in Pure Theory.

Career He taught at the University of Calcutta (1961–62), MIT (1966–69), Indian Statistical Institute (1969–72), the Delhi School of Economics of the University of Delhi (1973–77) and joined the Berkeley economics department in 1977. He has been Visiting Professor/ Fellow at London School of Economics, Trinity College, Cambridge, St Catherine's College, Oxford, and University of Siena, Italy.

His early work was on growth and trade theory. Subsequently, he has done theoretical and empirical research on rural institutions in poor countries, on political economy of development policies, and on international trade and globalisation. A part of his work is in the interdisciplinary area of economics, political science, and social anthropology.

He has been on the editorial board of a number of economics journals, including The American Economic Review (1978–81), the Journal of Economic Perspectives (1989–94), the International Economic Review (associate editor, 1971–1985), and the Journal of Development Economics (chief editor, 1985 to 2003).

He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981 and the Mohalanobis Gold Medal of the Indian Econometric Society in 1980.

He is the author of 13 books, more than 150 journal articles, and the editor of 12 other books. In his book The Political Economy of Development in India, Bardhan discusses the nature of dominant proprietary classes in India'. He claims that the industrial capitalist class, rich farmers, and the professionals in the public sector are the three main dominant classes in India which play a major role in influencing and designing public policy. He claims that there is a conflict of interests among these classes and they fight and bargain to get adequate share in the spoils of the system. This process of negotiation and bargain gives relative autonomy to the Indian state to exert its power.

Bardhan is famous for this prediction about China (2005):

"China's authoritarian system of government will likely be a major economic liability in the long run, regardless of its immediate implications for short-run policy decisions. source:Speech by Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew at the 37th Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture in New Delhi - India in an Asian Renaissance

Selected works

Books

(A memoir.) In Bengali as:

Chapters in books