Maitreesh Ghatak is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He is the Director of the Development Economics Group at the research Centre STICERD, LSE. He has previously taught at the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is an elected Fellow of the Econometric Society, the British Academy, the Royal Economic Society, and the International Economic Association. His main areas of research interest are development economics, public economics, and the economics of organizations. He is a co-editor of Economica, is on the editorial board of several other journals, and is a co-editor of the blog Ideas for India. He is a Fellow of the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), and a founding member of the research network Theoretical Research in Development (ThReD). He writes regularly on economic, political and policy issues for a broader audience, with a special focus on India, in various newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

Ghatak did his PhD in Economics at Harvard University in 1996 under the supervision of Eric Maskin and Abhijit V. Banerjee. Earlier, he did his undergraduate degree in Economics at Presidency College, Calcutta and his Master’s in Economics at the Delhi School of Economics. He has served in many senior administrative, editorial, and advisory roles in the past. He has been the PhD Programme Director and before that, the Deputy Head of the Department of Economics, LSE. He was also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Development Economics, Managing Editor of the Review of Economic Studies, and a co-editor of The Economics of Transition. He was a Board Member of BREAD, a member of the US Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation Economic Advisory Council, the Lead Academic of the International Growth Centre’s (IGC) India–Bihar programme, and an external member of the Research Committee of The World Bank.