Jagdish Bhagwati Keynote Speaker

Jagdish Bhagwati is a University professor of economics and law at Colombia University and former senior fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

A native of India, Bhagwati attended the University of Cambridge, where he graduated in 1956 with a first in economics tripos.

After completing his PhD, Bhagwati returned to India in 1961, first to teach briefly at the Indian Statistical Institute,  and then as professor of international trade at the University of Delhi as part of the Delhi School of Economics from 1962 to 1968. He also taught economics for twelve years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1968 to 1980).

Following his time teaching at MIT, Jagdish Bhagwati served as advisor for various world diplomacy institutions; He has been the economic policy adviser to Arthur Dunkel, director-general of GATT, special adviser to the United Nations on globalization, and external adviser to the World Trade Organization (WTO). He has served on the expert group appointed by the director-general of the WTO on the future of the organization, as well as the advisory committee to Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the NEPAD process in Africa. He was also a member of the Eminent Persons Group under the chairmanship of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil on the future of UNCTAD.

Bhagwati is described as one of the most creative international trade theorists of his generation and is a leader in the fight for freer trade.