Triangular race for post of chief economic adviser

Gita Gopinath, professor of economics at Harvard University, Arvind Subramanian, senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Rajiv B. Lall, executive chairman of IDFC, are in the race for the post of chief economic adviser.

The slot fell vacant with Raghuram Rajan being appointed as governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

Mysore-born Gopinath was 38 when she joined the economics department at Harvard University in 2010. A graduate from Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi and a postgraduate from the Delhi School of Economics, she moved to the University of Washington in 1996. A PhD thesis which she wrote at Princeton University a few years later was mentored by Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of the US Federal Reserve and Kenneth Rogoff, former director of research at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 2011, she was chosen as one of the Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum.

Subramanian is an eminent intellectual and his book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance was published in 2011. He also coauthored 'Who Needs to Open the Capital Account?', which hit the market last year. He was assistant director in the research department of the IMF and has taught at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

Lall has about three decades of experience with leading global investment banks, multilateral agencies and in academia. His areas of expertise include project finance, venture capital, international capital markets, trade, infrastructure and macroeconomic policy issues with a focus on India and China in particular.

In association with Mail Today