Parth J. Shah is founder president of the Centre for Civil Society. CCS advances social change through public policy. Their work in education, livelihood, and policy training promotes choice and accountability across private and public sectors. To translate policy into practice, CCS engages with policy and opinion leaders through research, pilot projects and advocacy.

Parth taught economics at the University of Michigan before returning to India to start CCS. He has published academic articles in the areas of development economics, welfare economics, business-cycle theory, free or laissez-faire banking, and currency-board systems.

He has also edited Morality of Markets, Friedman on India, Profiles in Courage: Dissent on Indian Socialism, Do Corporations have Social Responsibility? and has co-edited Law, Liberty, and Livelihood, The Terracotta Reader, and Agenda for Change. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines.

Yugank Goyal received his Ph.D. in Economics and Law from the University of Hamburg, Erasmus University Rotterdam and the University of Bologna as Erasmus Mundus Fellow. He has an L.L.M. from the University of Manchester and a Bachelor of Technology from NIT Surat, India.

He is the founding faculty member of O P Jindal Global University. In addition to helping establish the University, he spearheaded several institution building initiatives, including the designing of curriculum and academic policies of the University in its formative stage. Between 2009 and 2012, Yugank was Assistant Professor and Assistant Dean (Research & International Collaborations) at Jindal Global Law School. In his capacity as Assistant Dean, he cultivated the research architecture of the law school, and led its collaboration with leading law schools and think tanks around the world. As a prolific public speaker in charge of the University’s outreach programmes, he has also addressed more than three hundred leading schools, colleges and universities in India on the importance of law and social science education.

Yugank has taught Economics I and II, Economic Analysis of Law, Institutions, Mathematics and Environment Science. He has been awarded the Teaching Excellence Award in recognition of his course content and pedagogical innovations.

Prior to joining JGU, Yugank has worked as a consultant on rural development projects with ICICI Bank’s joint venture with the West Bengal State government. He continues to consult governmental and non-governmental organizations on a variety of projects.

Having studied engineering, economics and law, his work swiftly assumes interdisciplinarity. He has published on matters related to legal institutions, development economics, higher education and intellectual property and has traveled widely, speaking at international fora on topics of interest.

Yugank has also served as Faculty at Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy, and at the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women in New Delhi.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay is the founder and research director of IDF. He is also the professor of Emerging Market Finance, University of Groningen, Netherlands, and visiting professor, Gothenburg School of Business, Economics and Law, Gothenburg University, Sweden. Shubhashis graduated in Economics from Presidency College, Kolkata, and got his Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University, USA in 1983. He joined the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) as a lecturer in 1983, and was promoted to professor in 1991. In 2006, Shubhashis was awarded a doctorate (honoris causa) by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

In 2008, the year of the global financial crisis, Shubhashis was appointed advisor to the Finance Minister, Government of India. He has been a consultant to various ministries including Finance, Planning, Industry and Rural Development. He has led important government research projects like the leading indicator of economic activity, the impact of steel de-control on SAIL, the optimum use of Hajira-Bijapur-Jagdishpur gas pipeline and on the exit policy. As an advisor of PSFT Task Force on the plantation sector, he has developed a new financial instrument for reducing the impact of price volatility on plantation growers. He is currently on the board of IDE-I (International Development Enterprises – India).

Shubhashis has been a member of the South Asia Chief Economist’s Advisory Council of the World Bank, an advisor to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and on the board of the Centre for Analytical Finance, Indian School of Business (ISB). He is the Founder-President of the Society for the Promotion of Game Theory and its Application, and has also served on the board of the Industrial Reconstruction Bank of India (IRBI), as a member on the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Advisory Group on Bankruptcy Law, and on the Bankruptcy Task Force of IPD (Initiative for Policy Dialogue), Columbia University.

Shubhashis has published widely in international journals, and has authored a number of books. His published books include: Law and Economics: Volume I: Theory, Volume II: Practice (co-authored), 2013; Waiting to Connect (co-authored), 2008; Economic Reforms for the Poor (co-edited), 2000; Counting the Poor: Where Are the Poor in India (co-authored), 1998; The Institutions Governing Financial Markets (edited), 1996; Enabling Financial Institutions (co-authored), 1997; Economic Theory and Development Policy (co-edited), 1992; and Economic Development and Policy (co-edited), 1991. He is the chief editor of IDF’s Journal of Infrastructure Development and the Review of Market Integration, as also a member of the editorial boards of: Journal of Financial Stability and Review of Development Economics.

Amir Ullah Khan is a development economist, who teaches at the ISB and NALSAR in Hyderabad as a visiting professor. He was earlier head of strategy at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Prior to that, he worked as Director, India Development Foundation and as an Editor with Encyclopedia Britannica.

Amir studied Electronics Engineering at Osmania University, Rural Management at IRMA and then got his Ph.D. from the Jamia Millia Central University. He edits, with Dr. Bobby John, the Journal of Development Policy and Practice, published by SAGE.

Nimish Adhia is an assistant professor of Economics. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Nimish’s research concerns the interplay of culture and economics in the international arena, and has practical experience in international internships.

He has been an Upton Miller Teaching Fellow at Beloit College and a visiting assistant professor at Berry College.

Nimai Mehta is professorial lecturer, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, at American University, Washington D.C.

He also leads the School’s programmes in China and Europe, and has most recently led the University’s research engagements in Myanmar and India, in the fields of education and public health.

Nimai has held teaching positions at the School of Economics, University of the Philippines, where he was a research fellow and program associate with the Center for Integrative and Development Studies, and previously with the Ateneo de Manila University, Department of Economics.

Prior positions include: visiting scholar at the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy in Fairfax, Virginia, and adjunct professor at George Mason University, Department of Economics.

Nimai obtained his Masters in Applied Economics from Bombay University, and a Doctorate in Economics from the George Mason University, with specialisations in comparative economic systems, public choice, and development.

Bappaditya Mukhopadhyay is a professor at the Great Lakes Institute of Management, and is also a visiting professor at IIM Calcutta, at the University of Ulm, Germany, and at S P Jain Centre for Management in Singapore and Dubai. He is also the Managing Editor of: Journal of Emerging Market Finance and Journal of Infrastructure and Development, besides serving on the Editorial Advisory Board of the: International Research, Journal of Finance and Economics, International Bulletin of Business Administration, European Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Sciences and International Journal of Applied Economics and Finance.

Bappaditya has published over 15 articles in peer reviewed journals, and is currently authoring a book on Credit Risk Management. He is also a special invitee on the boards of: Risk Management Committee, Punjab National Bank, Member Index Committee, NCDEX, Advisory Board Member, and Asia Pacific Association of Derivatives (APAD), besides being a member of the Research Advisory Committee, NICR; and a special invitee on the board of the Risk Management Committee, IFCI.

Pronab Sen is the country director for the India Programme of the International Growth Centre (IGC). Pronab received his Ph.D. in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University specialising in open-economy macroeconomic systems, international economics and public finance.

Most recently the chairman of the National Statistical Commission, he has also had positions as the principal adviser, Power and Energy, at the Government of India’s Planning Commission; the first Chief Statistician of India, acting as the functional and technical head of the national statistical system in India,

as well as Secretary, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, Government of India (2007-2010). As a representative of the Planning Commission, he was principal author and coordinator of (a) the Mid-term Appraisal of the Eighth Five Year Plan, (b) the Ninth Five Year Plan, (c) the Mid-term Appraisal of the Ninth Five Year Plan, (d) the Tenth Five Year Plan, and the Mid-term Appraisal of the Tenth Five Year Plan.

Rajesh Chakrabarti is professor and acting dean at the Jindal Global Business School, Jindal Global University. He has taught Finance for over a decade and a half – at the University of Alberta, Canada, Georgia Tech, USA, and the Indian School of Business (ISB). As the founding executive director of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy at ISB’s Mohali campus, he helped design and launch one of India’s leading public policy programmes. He has also been Executive Vice President, Research and Policy at the Wadhwani Foundation and is a co-founder of the policy advisory start-up, Sunay Policy Advisory. Rajesh has held visiting positions at various places including IIM Calcutta, ISI Delhi, IDF Gurgaon, ICN Nancy, France, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

He has authored/edited seven books, with two more in the works, in addition to authoring several book chapters and articles on Finance, Economics, and Management in leading international scholarly journals like the Journal of Financial Economics and the Journal of International Business Studies. He has been a columnist with the Financial Express and is frequently quoted in the media. His current research interests are in the areas of management and public policy. Rajesh is an alumnus of Presidency College, Calcutta and IIM Ahmedabad, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ajay Shah is professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
Prior to the NIPFP, he has held positions at the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (Mumbai), Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research (Bombay) and the Ministry of Finance.

His research interests include policy issues on Indian economic growth, open economy macroeconomics, public finance, financial economics and pensions.

In the past decade, he was extensively involved in the policy process of the reforms of the equity market and the New Pension System.

Ajay’s recent publications include “Building State capacity for regulation in India”,

“Diagnosing and overcoming sustained food price volatility: Enabling a National Market for Food”, and “The rise of government-funded health insurance in India”.

Ajay studied at IIT, Bombay and USC, Los Angeles.

Alex Tabarrok is the Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center, and a professor of Economics at the George Mason University.
He is also a research fellow at the Mercatus Center and, along with Tyler Cowen, the founder of Marginal Revolution University: An Online Platform For Learning Economics.

Alex is also the co-author of an extensive website on the FDA, FDAReview.org, and the author/editor of a number of books, including the introductory economics textbooks, Modern Principles.

His research interests include empirical law and economics (tort reform, bounty hunters, judicial electoral systems etc.), voting theory and alternative political institutions and health economics.

He received his B.A. from the University of Victoria, Canada, and his Ph.D. from George Mason University.

Razeen Sally is the director of the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), which he co-founded in 2006.
He is also associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, and chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies, the main economic think tank in his native Sri Lanka.
He was on the faculty of the London School of Economics for eighteen years, from where he also received his Ph.D. Razeen has held adjunct teaching, research and advisory positions at universities and think tanks in the USA, in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Razeen is on the Global Agenda Council for Competitiveness of the World Economic Forum, and was awarded the Hayek Medal by the Hayek Society, in , in 2011. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Razeen’s research and teaching focuses on global trade policy, and Asia in the world economy. He has written on the WTO, FTAs, and on different aspects of trade policy in Asia, besides also on the history of economic ideas, especially the theory of commercial policy.

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha is director and senior fellow at the IDFC Institute. He provides direction to the institute’s research programmes.
Previously, he was the executive editor of Mint, a financial daily, where he managed the opinion section, wrote the daily editorials and the award-winning Café Economics column. He also helped launch the data journalism initiative at the newspaper. Before joining Mint, he was deputy editor of Business World, a financial magazine.

Niranjan was awarded the Jefferson Fellowship by the East-West Center, in Hawaii, in 1998. He received the Society of Publishers in Asia Awards for excellence in opinion writing, two years in a row (2010 and 2011), in addition to winning the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2012, and the B.R. Shenoy Award for Economics in 2017.

Niranjan is a member of the academic advisory board of the Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics, and of the board of trustees of the Centre for Civil Society. He was also a member of the advisory committee on the fifth volume of the official history of the Reserve Bank of India, written by Tirthankar Roy. He has served on the economics curriculum advisory committees of the Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy, Ramnarain Ruia College and Welingkar Institute of Management.

Niranjan holds a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from Mumbai University, and his Ph.D. thesis has been submitted to the Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy.

Gerard Alexander is associate professor at the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics, University of Virginia.
His research began with a focus on the conditions of democratic consolidation in advanced industrial countries, especially in Western Europe. His first book — The Sources of Democratic Consolidation (Cornell University Press, 2002) — argued that the key right-of-center political movements formed long-term commitments to democracy only when their political risks in democracy became relatively low as left agendas moderated across time.

In the Journal of Theoretical Politics (2001), he argued that formal political institutions in democracy cannot create the degree of predictability needed for consolidation. In the Comparative Political Studies (2002),

he reasons that non-formal, social-structural characteristic of countries are more important causes of regime outcomes than the formal regime characteristics emphasized in prominent claims concerning the rule of law and “institutionalized uncertainty.” Related reasoning is the basis of an article in The National Interest, “The Authoritarian Illusion” (2004).

His current research concerns factors affecting the size and role of government in selected cases in Western Europe and also the United States, and how they influence conservative attempts at reform of welfare States.

Gerard is a visiting professor at the American Enterprise Institute. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.