Arvind Subramanian

Senior Fellow
Growth, trade, development, institutions, aid, oil, India, Africa, the WTO, intellectual property
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Education: M.Phil. and D.Phil., University of Oxford, U.K.; MBA, Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, India; BS, St. Stephens College, Delhi
Media Contact: Jessica Brinton

Arvind Subramanian, an Indian national, is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development with a joint appointment at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics and is also a senior research professor at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to his joint appointment with CGD and PIIE, he was assistant director in the research department of the International Monetary Fund. He obtained his undergraduate degree from St. Stephens College, Delhi, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, India, and his M.Phil. and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, UK.

Previously, he worked at the GATT (1988–1992) during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (1999–2000). In his career at the Fund, he worked on trade, development, Africa, India, and the Middle East.

He has written on growth, trade, development, institutions, aid, oil, India, Africa, the WTO, and intellectual property. He has published widely in academic and other journals, including the American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Economic Growth, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, International Monetary Fund Staff Papers, Foreign Affairs, World Economy, and Economic and Political Weekly.

He has also been published and/or cited extensively, including in the Economist, Financial Times, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and the New York Review of Books. He was interviewed on PBS’s Charlie Rose show. He is a columnist for India’s leading financial daily, Business Standard.

His book, India’s Turn: Understanding the Economic Transformation was published in 2008 by Oxford University Press. He is coeditor of Efficiency, Equity, and Legitimacy: The Multilateral Trading System at the Millennium with Roger Porter and Pierre Sauvé (Brookings/Harvard University Press, 2002).

He is currently ranked among the top 4 percent of the world’s academic economists in terms of research and publications, according to the widely used REPEC rankings.

New Popular Working Papers Other CGD Pubs Events Selected Works
  • Until recently, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been an effective framework for cooperation because it has continually adapted to changing economic realities. The current Doha Agenda is an aberration because it does not reflect one of the biggest shifts in the international economic and...

  • Nancy Birdsall and Arvind Subramanian identify a fair deal on climate change for developed and developing countries by focusing not on equitable emissions quotas but on fair access to energy services.

  • “February 2021. It’s a cold blustery morning in Washington. The newly inaugurated president of the United States is on his way to the office of the Chinese managing director of the IMF to sign the agreement under which the IMF will provide 3 trillion dollars in emergency financing to the...

  • After the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak last Friday, I invited Arvind Subramanian, a former IMF resident representative in Cairo and a regular columnist for the Business Standard, the leading business daily in his native India, to share his views on Egypt’s economic prospects. In the...

  • In this short video clip, CGD senior fellows David Wheeler and Arvind Subramanian tell how CGD influenced the World Bank to stop financing coal-burning power plants through the Clean Tech Fund and instead focus on solar thermal power. Drawing on Wheeler’s research, Wheeler and others in...

  • Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow jointly appointed at the Center for Global Development and Peterson Institute, participated in the recent event Beyond Relief: Helping Haiti hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations. The panel discussed medium- and long-term goals for Haiti’s recovery,...

  • Decades of research have been unable to conclusively show either a positive or negative effect of aid on economic growth in poor countries. CGD senior fellow Arvind Subramanian and Raghuram G. Rajan use a new technique in their latest working paper that suggests aid slows the manufacturing sector...

  • In this working paper, the authors shed light on systemic problems of variability and valuation in the Penn World Table GDP estimates that distort cross-country comparisons of the data. They propose creating a new chained series that values all data at PPP prices and makes better use of...

  • The authors suggest a new approach assessing carbon taxes on imports to address the concerns from high-income countries about the effect of taxes on competition without damaging trade from developing countries.

  • In this paper Arvind Subramanian and co-authors investigate the differential effects of cooperatitve policy action on climate change and find that one size doesn't fit all. Policy instruments should distinguish between low- and high-carbon countries to avoid serious trade consequences.

There are no related books.
  • Postcrisis Growth and Development: A Development Agenda for the G-20 - Dec 7, 2010

    InfoShop presents Postcrisis Growth and Development A Development Agenda for the G-20 The G-20 can play an important role in the aftermath of the crisis by making medium-term growth and development issues the center of the G-20 agenda. The book proposes key areas for G-20 action on aid for...

  • How Much Can We Trust Standard International Measures of Income and Growth? - Dec 1, 2009

    Abstract:(Joint work with Simon Johnson, William Larson, and Chris Papageorgiou.) This paper explores important problems in the most common database used by economists to make international comparisons of income and growth--the Penn World Table (PWT) GDP estimates. We focus on two problems:...

  • Zedillo Commission Report on World Bank Governance - Nov 6, 2009

    The World Bank recently released the long-awaited report of a high-level commission on World Bank governance headed by former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo. The report, requested by World Bank president Robert Zoellick, offers a comprehensive blueprint for modernizing the bank. The Center for...

  • Beyond Lending: How Multilateral Banks Can Help Developing Countries Manage Volatility - May 21, 2009

    Developing countries are susceptible to many kinds of risks—from liquidity shocks and terms of trade volatility to natural disasters. The economic crisis is a reminder that dealing with external risks is a formidable challenge to economic development. The crisis, largely a product of the rich...

  • New Ideas in Development after the Financial Crisis - Apr 22, 2009

    The New Ideas in Development After the Financial Crisis Conference, sponsored by CGD and the Bernard L. Schwartz Forum on Constructive Capitalism, will examine the implications of the global financial crisis on existing development strategies. Panels of distinguished academics and policy...

  • Congressional Hearing: Contributing Factors and International Responses to the Global Food Crisis - May 14, 2008

    House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank today announced the committee will hold a hearing entitled "Contributing Factors and International Responses to the Global Food Crisis" to examine the underlying causes of the current intense pressures on the world’s food system and focus...

Non-CGD Publications

Development

  • “Does Aid Affect Governance?” American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, (with Raghuram Rajan), May 2007.
  • “Africa’s Growth Prospects: Benchmarking the Constraints,” NBER Working Paper, 13120 (with Simon Johnson and Jonathan Ostry).
  • “Foreign Capital and Economic Development,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, March 2007, (with Eswar Prasad and Raghuram Rajan).
  • “How to Help Poor Countries,” Foreign Affairs, (with Nancy Birdsall and Dani Rodrik), 2005.
  • “Aid and Growth: What Does the Cross-Section Evidence Really Show?” National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper, No. 11513, (with Raghuram Rajan), 2005; forthcoming Review of Economics and Statistics.
  • “What Undermines Aid’s Impact on Growth,” NBER Working Paper, No. 11657, (with Raghuram Rajan), 2005.
  • “Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development,” Journal of Economic Growth, (with Dani Rodrik and Francesco Trebbi), 2004.
  • “Saving Iraq from its Oil,” Foreign Affairs, (with Nancy Birdsall), 2004.
  • “What Determines Long-Run Macroeconomic Stability? Democratic Institutions,” IMF Working Staff Papers, (with Shanker Satyanath), 2007.
  • “The Natural Resource Curse: An Illustration from Nigeria,” NBER Working Paper, with Xavier Sala-i-Martin), 2003.
  • “The Primacy of Institutions and What it does or does not Mean,” Finance and Development, (with Dani Rodrik), June 2003.
  • “Who can Explain the Mauritian Miracle: Meade, Romer, Sachs or Rodrik,” In Search of Prosperity, edited by Dani Rodrik, Princeton University Press, (with Devesh Roy), 2002.

India: Development

  • “Policies, Enforcement, and Customs Evasion: Evidence from India,” IMF Working Paper, (with Prachi Mishra and Petia Topalova), forthcoming.
  • “The Intriguing Relationship between Growth and Institutions in India,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy, forthcoming.
  • “India’s Pattern of Development: What Happened, What Follows,” Journal of Monetary Economics, (with K. Kochhar, U. Kumar, R. Rajan, and I. Tokatlidis), 2006.
  • “From ‘Hindu Growth’ to Productivity Surge: The Mystery of the Indian Growth Transition,” IMF Staff Papers, (with Dani Rodrik), 2004.
  • “Why India can grow at 7 Percent a year or More?” Economic and Political Weekly, (with Dani Rodrik), 2004.

Trade and Intellectual Property

  • “The WTO promotes trade strongly, but unevenly,” Journal of International Economics, (with Shang-Jin Wei), 2007.
  • “Why Prospects for Doha Trade Talks are not Bright?” Finance and Development, (with Aaditya Mattoo), March 2005.
  • “Medicines, Patents and TRIPs,” Finance and Development, March 2004.
  • “The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act and Its Rules of Origin: Generosity Undermined?” The World Economy, Vol. 26, No. 6, (with Aaditya Mattoo and Devesh Roy), 2003.
  • “The WTO and Poorest Countries: The Stark Reality,” World Trade Review, (with Aaditya Mattoo), 2003.
  • “Measuring Services Trade Liberalization and Its Impact on Economic Growth: An Illustration,” Journal of Economic Integration, (with Aaditya Mattoo and Randeep Rathindran), 2002.
  • “Dynamic Gains from Trade – Evidence from South Africa,” IMF Staff Papers Vol. 48 No. 1, (with Gunnar Jonsson), 2001.
  • “Can TRIPS Serve as An Enforcement Device in the WTO?” Journal of International Economic Law, (with J. Watal), 2000.
  • “Trade and the Environment: A Nearly Empty Box?” The World Economy, 1992.
  • “TRIPs and the Paradigm of the GATT: A Tropical, Temperate View,” World Economy, 1990.
  • “The International Economics of Intellectual Property Right Protection: A Welfare-Theoretic Trade Policy Analysis,” World Development, Vol. 19, No. 8.
  • “Regulatory Autonomy and Multilateral Disciplines: the Dilemma and a Possible Resolution,” Journal of International Economic Law, Vol. 9 No. 2, (with Aaditya Mattoo.)

India: Trade and Intellectual Property

  • “India as User and Creator of Intellectual Property: The Challenges Post-Doha,” in India and the WTO, edited by A. Mattoo and R. Stern, World Bank), 2003.
  • “India and the Multilateral Trading System Post-Doha: Defensive or Proactive?” in India and the WTO, edited by A. Mattoo and R. Stern, World Bank, (with A. Mattoo), 2003.
  • “The Case for a US-India Free Trade Agreement,” Economic and Political Weekly, (with A. Mattoo), 2003.
  • “Putting Some Numbers on the TRIPS Pharmaceutical Debate,” International Journal of Technology Management, 1994.

Book, op-eds and other

  • "Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance," Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2011.
  • “Efficiency, Equity, and Legitimacy: The Multilateral Trading System at the Millenium,” Brookings/Harvard University Press, (edited with Roger Porter and Pierre Sauvé), 2002.
  • Profile of Paul Krugman: “Economist as Crusader,” Finance and Development, June 2006.
  • “The Bangalore Bug,” op-ed in the Financial Times, (with Raghuram Rajan), 2006.
  • “China’s exchange rate,” op-ed in the Financial Times, (with Raghuram Rajan), 2005.
  • Profile of Jagdish Bhagwati: “The Globalization Guru,” Finance and Development, September 2005.

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