Pranab Bardhan

Pranab Bardhan
File:4.2- Development strategy and structural transformation (10035274215).jpg
Born	11 September 1939 (age 74) Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
Nationality	Indian
Field	Development economics, Political Economy and International trade
Information at IDEAS / RePEc

Pranab Kumar Bardhan (born 11 September 1939, Calcutta, British India) 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.

Bardhan received his bachelor's degree at Presidency College, Kolkata in 1959, his master's at University of Calcutta in 1961, and his doctorate at Cambridge University in 1966. 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.

He has done theoretical and field studies 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. He has occasionally written columns in The New York Times, Financial Times, Scientific American, Boston Review, Business Standard, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, YaleGlobal Online, Anandabazar Patrika (Kolkata). Outside the US, he has given public lectures or keynote addresses at Beijing, Bogota, Calcutta, Cape Town, Canberra, Copenhagen, Delhi, Istanbul, London, Manchester, Melbourne, Mumbai, Nairobi, Oxford, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Turin, and Vancouver. His memoirs in Bengali have been serialised in the Calcutta literary magazine Desh.

Bardhan is also on the advisory board of FFIPP-USA (Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace-USA), a network of Palestinian, Israeli, and International faculty, and students, working in for an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and just peace.

Views

For him equality of opportunity is more important than equality of income. Equality of opportunity depends on factors such as : Land distribution, education, and social equality. 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. Bardhan 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.

Selected works

Books

• (A memoir.)

In Bengali as:

External links

• About FFIPP