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Social Sciences

Raghuram G. Rajan

Chief Economic Adviser, Government of India

The Infosys Prize for Social Sciences – Economics is awarded to Professor Raghuram Govind Rajan for his work in analyzing the contribution of financial development to economic growth, as well as the potentially harmful effects of dysfunctional incentives that lead to excessive risk-taking.

Infographic:

Predicting a financial meltdown

Scope and Impact of Work

Professor Rajan's research interests include banking, corporate finance and economic development. He is particularly interested in the role that finance plays in these areas. He has published extensively in the top economics and finance journals. His publications include Aid, Dutch Disease, and Manufacturing Growth in the Journal of Development Economics (2011) co-authored with Arvind Subramanian; The Internal Governance of Firms in the Journal of Finance (2011) co-authored with Viral Acharya and Stewart Myers; Fear of Fire Sales, Illiquidity Seeking, and Credit Freezes in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (forthcoming) co-authored with Douglas Diamond; and Land and Credit: A Study of the Political Economy of Banking in the United States in the Early 20th Century in the Journal of Finance (forthcoming) co-authored with Rodney Ramcharan.

Professor Rajan's book Fault Lines: How Hidden Cracks Still Threaten the World Economy provides a cutting-edge analysis of the complex interaction between financial institutions, governments, and people. He provides a remarkably broad vision to the understanding of the financial and economic crises that plague the world. He has also co-authored a book called Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists with Luigi Zingales.

Bio

Raghuram Rajan assumed charge as the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India on September 4th 2013. Rajan is on leave from the University of Chicago, where he is the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the Booth School. Between 2003 and 2006, Dr. Rajan was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund.

Dr. Rajan’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance, and economic development, especially the role finance plays in it. He co-authored Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists with Luigi Zingales in 2003. He then wrote Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, for which he was awarded the Financial Times-Goldman Sachs prize for best business book in 2010.

Dr. Rajan is a member of the Group of Thirty. He was the President of the American Finance Association in 2011 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In January 2003, the American Finance Association awarded Dr. Rajan the inaugural Fischer Black Prize for the best finance researcher under the age of 40. The other awards he has received include the global Indian of the year award from NASSCOM in 2011, the Infosys prize for the Economic Sciences in 2012, and the Center for Financial Studies-Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics in 2013.

Timeline

1985-1991

1985-1991

B.Tech. (Electrical Engineering), IIT-Bombay; M.B.A. , IIM-Ahmedabad; Ph.D. (Economics), Sloan School of Management, MIT

1991

1991

Joins the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago as Assistant Professor of Finance

1995

1995

Appointed full professor at Booth School of Business, University of Chicago

2003

2003

Co-authors and publishes Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists with Luigi Zingales

2008

2008

Appointed special economic adviser to the Prime Minister of India

2010

2010

Publishes Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy

2011

2011

Wins the Infosys Prize in Social Sciences

2013

2013

Appointed Governor of Reserve Bank of India

1985-1991
1991
1995
2003
2008
2010
2011
2013

Jury Citation

Dr. Raghuram G. Rajan is a brilliant scholar whose work has analyzed the contribution of financial development to economic growth, as well as the potentially harmful effects of dysfunctional incentives that lead to excessive risk-taking. He presented convincing evidence of the possibility of a global financial crisis – a subject on which he has been vocal at least from 2005, well before the actual crisis that occurred during 2008-9. His recent book, Fault Lines, is a masterly overview and analysis of the complex interaction between financial institutions, governments and people. Rajan has brought a remarkably broad vision to the understanding of the financial and economic crises that currently plague the world.

Prof. Raghuram G. Rajan

Prof. Raghuram G. Rajan reacts to winning the Infosys Prize

"I'm very happy to congratulate Raghuram Rajan for getting the Infosys Prize for Economics this year for his totally outstanding work in Economics, connected with how the financial institutions work, and more generally, how institutions - financial and other economic institutions - work together with human beings to produce the kind of results that an economy is expected to produce. This is work of real great importance."

Amartya Sen

Jury Chair
Social Sciences