Unpacking and Understanding India’s Economic Data

Arvind Subramanian is senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). Previously, he was senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Distinguished Non-Resident fellow at the Center for Global Development, Professor at Ashoka University, New Delhi and visiting lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School. He served as the chief economic advisor to the government of India between 2014 and 2018. He currently also advises the Governments of Tamil Nadu and Punjab in India on macro-economic and sectoral issues. Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the world's top 100 global thinkers in 2011.

As chief economic adviser, Subramanian oversaw the publication of the annual Economic Survey of India, which became a widely read document on Indian economic policy and development. For example, the 2018 Survey had 20 million views from over 190 countries in its first year of publication. Among the major initiatives carried out during his tenure were, a uniform, nation-wide goods and services tax (GST), attempts to tackle the Twin Balance Sheet challenge by enacting a bankruptcy code, creating the financial and digital platform for connectivity (the so-called JAM trinity), and universal basic income-type schemes. His reflections on his tenure as chief economic adviser were published as “Of Counsel: The Challenges of the Jaitley-Modi Economy,” by Penguin Random House, India in 2018.

While at the PIIE between 2007 and 2014, Subramanian wrote a critically acclaimed book, Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance which sold over 130,000 copies in its first year of publication and was translated into 4 languages. He has written extensively for many academic journals on growth, trade, development, aid, India, Africa, and the World Trade Organization. His op-eds and essays have been cited and/or published in the Economist, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, New York Review of Books, Business Standard, and he is a regular columnist for Project Syndicate.

Before joining PIIE, Subramanian was the assistant director in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. He served at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) from 1988 to 1992 during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and previously taught at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced International Studies.

He obtained his undergraduate degree from St. Stephens College, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, and his M.Phil and D.Phil from the University of Oxford.

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