Managing Trustee & Research Director – India Development Foundation (IDF)

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay got his PhD in Economics, in 1983, from Cornell University, USA. He joined the Indian Statistical Institute as a lecturer in 1983 and became a full professor in 1991. He founded the India Development Foundation in 2003, was its Director between 2003 and 2008 and is currently its Managing Trustee and Research Director. He has been involved with setting up a number of different programmes ---School of Humanities and Social Sciences of Shiv Nadar University, the Indian School of Public Policy and more recently the School of Liberal Studies at UPES.

He has held the Chair Professorship of Emerging Market Finance in the University of Groningen from 2014 till 2023 and continues to be a Visiting Professor in the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. In 2008, the year of the global financial crisis, he was appointed Advisor to the Finance Minister, Government of India. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in October 2006. In Sweden, he has also held the prestigious Malmsten Guest Professorship in 2007 and the Bertil Danielsson Guest Professorship in 2008.

He has been a member of the South Asia Chief Economist’s Advisory Council of the World Bank, advisor to the Competition Commission of India, member of the Board of the Centre for Analytical Finance, ISB, the international advisor of the Centre for Law and Economics of Financial Markets (LEFIC) at the Copenhagen Business School, a member of the Bankruptcy Task Force of IPD, Columbia University and on the International Advisory Committee of the School of Business, Economics and Law of the University of Gothenburg.

He has led important government sponsored studies, e.g., those leading to the steel decontrol in India, dismantling of the administered prices regime, the optimal planning of the use of natural gas for the HBJ gas pipeline, untying the purchase of gas stoves from that of gas cylinders, etc. He has worked closely with industry both in India and abroad. He has lectured widely to foreign industry delegations coming to India, attended their world meets as a resource person and has held closed-door, one-on-one discussions with their management teams. Most recently, he has been a member on the High Powered Committee on Use of Defence Land.

He has published widely in international journals, and has a number of books, in economics and finance. His current research areas cover policy, finance and law. He has a rich experience of advising students at the PhD level and has a number of students both in India and abroad.