Pranab Bardhan is Professor of Graduate School at the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was educated at Presidency College, Kolkata and Cambridge University, England. He had been at the faculty of MIT, Indian Statistical Institute and Delhi School of Economics before joining Berkeley. He held the Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Siena, Italy in 2008-9, and was the BP Centennial Professor at London School of Economics for 2010-11. He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982. He has done theoretical and field studies research on rural institutions in poor countries, on political economy of development policies, and on globalization. A part of his work is in the interdisciplinary area of economics, political science, and social anthropology. He was Chief Editor of the Journal of Development Economics for 1985-2003. He is the author of 14 books and editor of 13 other books, His two recent popular-level books are Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India (Princeton, 2013) and Globalization, Democracy and Corruption (Frontpage, 2015). Email: bardhan [at] econ.berkeley.edu
Website: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/bardhan/bardhan.htm
by Pranab Bardhan My last column was about populism. One group populists invariably dislike are the ‘liberals’—the despised L-word in American politics. Some of the same people are often despised also by the Left all over the world as ‘neo-liberals’. It is not always easy to know who the latter are, as the word is…
by Pranab Bardhan The ill-defined term ‘populism’ is used in different senses not just by common people or the media, but even among social scientists. Economists usually interpret it as short-termism at the expense of the long-term health of the economy. They usually refer to it in describing macro-economic profligacy, leading to galloping budget deficits…