Karthik Muralidharan

Last updated

Karthik Muralidharan (born November 1975) is an Indian economist who currently serves as a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, where he also holds the Tata Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Economics. His primary research interests include development economics, public economics, and labour economics. Moreover, Muralidharan is co-chair of the education programme of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). [1] He also founded CEGIS, [2] an organization aimed to improve lives by helping state governments deliver better development outcomes.

Contents

Biography

After growing up in India, Karthik Muralidharan earned an A.B. in economics (summa cum laude) from Harvard University in 1998, followed by an M.Phil. in economics from Cambridge University in 1999, and a Ph.D. in economics again from Harvard University in 2007. Since his graduation, Muralidharan has mostly worked at the University of California, San Diego, first as an assistant professor (2008–14), and then as associate professor; since 2017, he has held the Tata Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Economics. [3]

In line with his research activities, Muralidharan is affiliated with a number of economic research institutions, including J-PAL (where he is the co-chair of its education programme, together with Philip Oreopoulos), Innovations for Poverty Action, NBER, BREAD, the Center for Effective Global Action, the ifo Institute for Economic Research, and the International Growth Centre. In terms of professional service, he holds editorships with the Journal of Development Economics , the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , and India Policy Forum , in addition to refereeing for various academic journals in economics. [4]

Research

Karthik Muralidharan's research focuses on education, health and social protection, the measurement of the quality of public service delivery, programme evaluation, and improvements to the effectiveness of public spending (especially in developing countries). In particular, Muralidharan has contributed to the research of public servant absenteeism in developing countries, with a focus on teachers and health workers, e.g. finding that on average ca. 19% of teachers and 35% of health workers were absent on a given work day in a sample of developing countries (Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Peru and Uganda), and that among those present many weren't working. [5] Focusing on teacher absenteeism in India, further findings include that higher pay isn't generally correlated with higher presence, presence decreases in age and rank, and that absenteeism cannot be explained by teachers being outsiders to the communities in which they are teaching (as comparable local teachers have similar absence rates); moreover, private school teachers are only slightly less likely to be absent than public school teachers unless there is local competition between private and public schools. [6] In another study on education, Muralidharan (together with Venkatesh Sundararaman) found that conditioning teacher pay on their performance for two years was effective in increasing students' performance in math and language tests by 0.27 and 0.17 standard deviations, respectively, in schools in Andhra Pradesh. [7]

He is ranked among the top 6% of economists on IDEAS/RePEc. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Kremer</span> American economist and Nobel laureate (born 1964)

Michael Robert Kremer is an American development economist currently serving as University Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago and Director of the Development Innovation Lab at the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. Kremer formerly served as the Gates Professor of Developing Societies at Harvard University, a role he held from 2003 to 2020. In 2019, Kremer was jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, together with Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esther Duflo</span> French-American economist (born 1972)

Esther Duflo, FBA is a French-American economist currently serving as the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2019, she was jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences alongside Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abhijit Banerjee</span> American economist

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is an Indian-born American economist who is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), an MIT based global research center promoting the use of scientific evidence to inform poverty alleviation strategies. In 2019, Banerjee shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." He and Esther Duflo are married, and became the sixth married couple to jointly win a Nobel or Nobel Memorial Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab</span> Global research center working to reduce poverty

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology aimed to reducing poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by rigorous, scientific evidence. J-PAL funds, provides technical support to, and disseminates the results of randomized controlled trials evaluating the efficacy of social interventions in health, education, agriculture, and a range of other fields. As of 2020, the J-PAL network consisted of 500 researchers and 400 staff, and the organization's programs had impacted over 400 million people globally. The organization has regional offices in seven countries around the world, and is headquartered near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Andhra Pradesh Randomized Evaluation Studies (APRESt) are a series of large-scale randomized evaluations aimed at understanding how to improve educational outcomes of students in rural India. APRESt is made up of three main projects: 1) Incentives & Inputs 2). AP School Choice and 3). School Health. Each project aims to rigorously evaluate education initiatives in India. The Azim Premji Foundation is the lead executor of each project in APRESt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Glennerster</span> British economist

Rachel Glennerster is a British economist. She is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. She has been announced as the new president for the Center for Global Development, starting in September 2024.

Dr. Suresh Subramani is the Global Director of the Tata Institute for Genetics & Society, former Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and a Distinguished Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California, San Diego. A highly distinguished cell and molecular biologist, Dr. Subramani has been a member of the UC San Diego faculty since 1982.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Council of Applied Economic Research</span>

National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) is India’s oldest and largest independent, non-profit, economic policy research think tank. Established in New Delhi in 1956, it acquired considerable national and international standing within only a few decades of its founding. It is one of a handful of think tanks globally that combine rigorous analysis and policy outreach with deep data collection capabilities, especially for household surveys.

Daniel I. Rees is an American economist who currently serves as Professor of Economics at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. His research interests presently include health and labour economics.

Valerie Ann Ramey is an American economist who is currently Professor Emerita of Economics at the University of California, San Diego.

Pascaline Dupas is a French economist whose research focuses on development economics and applied microeconomics, with a particular interest in health, education, and savings. She is a professor in economics and public affairs at Princeton University and is a co-chair of the Poverty Action Lab's health sector. She received the Best Young French Economist Prize in 2015.

Philip Oreopoulos is an economist who currently serves as Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Oreopoulos's research focuses on the economics of education, labour economics, and public finance.

Paul William Glewwe is an economist and Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. His research interests include economic development and growth, the economics of the public sector, and poverty and welfare. He formerly was the Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy and served as co-chair of the education programme of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL).

Rema Hanna is an economist and is the Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South East Asia Studies at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Moreover, she currently serves as co-director of the Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) research programme at Harvard's Center for International Development and a scientific co-director for Southeast Asia at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Her research focuses on the efficiency and effectiveness of public services in developing countries, with specific focus on service delivery and the impacts of corruption. She is also the co-chair of the editorial board for the academic journal Review of Economics and Statistics.

Jere Richard Behrman is an American economist and the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He belongs to the world's most prominent development and education economists and human capital scholars, with a strong focus on Central and South America.

Eric P. Bettinger is an American economist and currently works as the Conley-DeAngelis Family Professor of Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He ranks among the world's leading education economists.

James Andreoni is a Professor in the Economics Department of the University of California, San Diego where he directs the EconLab. His research focuses on behavioral economics, experimental economics, and public economics. Andreoni is well known for his research on altruism, and in particular for coining the term warm-glow giving to describe personal gains from altruistic acts. Andreoni's research uses a mixture of economic theory, experiments, and standard analysis of survey data to explore a variety of topics including: moral decision making, time preferences, charitable giving and altruistic decisions. His research has been described as expanding “our understanding of donors and charities and our broader understanding of public goods and expenditures.”

Jeffrey Stuart Hammer is a health and development economist. Hammer was the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor of Economic Development at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University. His primary research focus is the economics of health policy and health service provision in poor countries. He was on the core team of the 2004 World Development Report “Making Services Work for Poor People,” alongside Lant Pritchett, Shanta Devarajan, and other notable economists. He is currently a senior non-resident scholar at the National Council of Applied Economic Research in Delhi, and Director of the One Hundred Homes project.

Joel Sobel is an American economist and currently professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on game theory and has been seminal in the field of strategic communication in economic games. His work with Vincent Crawford established the game-theoretic concept of cheap talk.

Julie Berry Cullen is an American economist who is a professor and Chair of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. She is also a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her research considers public economics and the economics of education.

References

  1. ↑ Webpage of Karthik Muralidharan on the website of UCSD. Retrieved January 31st, 2018.
  2. ↑ "Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS)". CEGIS Final. Retrieved 2023-02-27.
  3. ↑ CV of Karthik Muralidharan on the website of UCSD. Retrieved January 31st, 2018.
  4. ↑ CV of Karthik Muralidharan on the website of UCSD. Retrieved January 31st, 2018.
  5. ↑ Chaudhury, Nazmul; Hammer, Jeffrey; Kremer, Michael; Muralidharan, Karthik; Rogers, F. Halsey (2006). "Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 20 (1): 91–116. doi:10.1257/089533006776526058. PMID   17162836.
  6. ↑ Kremer, Michael; Chaudhury, Nazmul; Rogers, F. Halsey; Muralidharan, Karthik; Hammer, Jeffrey (2005). "Teacher Absence in India: A Snapshot". Journal of the European Economic Association. 3 (2–3): 658–667. doi:10.1162/1542476054473143 (inactive 2024-06-29).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of June 2024 (link)
  7. ↑ Muralidharan, Karthik; Sundararaman, Venkatesh (2011). "Teacher Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from India". Journal of Political Economy. 119 (1): 39–77. doi:10.1086/659655.
  8. ↑ IDEAS/RePEc ranking of economists. Retrieved January 31st, 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.