Arvind Subramanian Keynote Speaker

Previously, he was senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, distinguished nonresident 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 advises the government of the Indian state Tamil Nadu on macroeconomic and sectoral issues.

As chief economic adviser during 2014–18, 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. Major initiatives carried out during his tenure included a uniform nationwide goods and services tax (GST), a bankruptcy code to tackle the Twin Balance Sheet challenge, a financial and digital platform for connectivity (the so-called JAM trinity), and universal basic income schemes.

While at the Institute, Subramanian wrote two critically acclaimed books: Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance, published by PIIE in September 2011, and India’s Turn: Understanding the Economic Transformation, published by Oxford University Press in 2008. Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the world’s top 100 global thinkers in 2011. 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 published in the Economist, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, New York Review of Books, and the Business Standard, andhe 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.