NAME: Pulapre Balakrishnan

DATE OF BIRTH: April 4, 1955

ADDRESS: 'Aparna', Ambalavattom, P.O. Edarikode, Kerala 676501, India

CONTACT: e-mail: pulapre.balakrishnan@gmail.com

EDUCATIONAL: Scuola No. 56, Moscow 1961-64 and Stanes High School, Coimbatore 1965-70; B.A., Madras Christian College 1975; M.A., Jawaharlal Nehru University 1977; M. Phil., University of Oxford 1981; Ph.D., University of Cambridge 1988

ACADEMIC POSITION: Honorary Visiting Professor, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala 

PREVIOUS APPOINTMENTS: Lecturer, Shriram College of Commerce, University of Delhi 1977-78; Assistant Professor, Madras Christian College, University of Madras 1978-79; Lecturer, Worcester College, University of Oxford 1986-88;Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 1988-89; Visiting Associate, Indian Statistical Institute 1989-90; Fellow, Madras Institute of Development Studies 1990-91; Associate Professor, Indian Statistical Institute 1991-96; Country Economist for Ukraine, The World Bank, Washington, D.C. 1996-97; Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode 1997-2007; Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi 2006-10; Professor, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, 2010-15; Professor, Ashoka University, Sonipat, 2015-2023

PUBLICATIONS:

Books and monographs

‘Pricing and Inflation in India’, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991

‘Monetary Policy, Inflation and Activity’, Bombay: Reserve Bank of India, 1992

‘Agricultural Growth in India since 1991’, with Ramesh Golait and Pankaj Kumar, Mumbai: Reserve Bank of India, 2008

‘Economic Growth in India: History and Prospect’, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010

‘Economic Reforms and Growth in India’, editor, Hyderabad: OBS, 2011

‘Politics Trumps Economics: The interface of politics and economics in contemporary India’, co-edited with Bimal Jalan, New Delhi: Rupa, 2014

‘Economic Growth and its Distribution in India’, editor, Hyderabad: OBS, 2015

'India's Economy from Nehru to Modi: A brief history', Ranikhet: Permanent Black 

Selected journal articles

"On the significance of interlinked factor-markets in agrarian economies", `Indian Economic Journal,' April 1984.

"Industrial price behaviour in India: An error-correction model", `Journal of Development Economics', October 1991.

"Rational expectations and price behaviour in India", `Economic and Political  Weekly', July 1993.

"The determinants of inflation in India: Bayesian and Classical analyses", with  K.Surekha and B.P. Vani, `Journal of Quantitative Economics', July 1994.

"Total factor productivity growth in Indian manufacturing industry: A fresh look",with K. Pushpangadan, `Economic and Political Weekly', July 1994.

"Public intervention and private speculation: The competition for supplies in the Indian wheat market", with Bharat Ramaswami, `Journal of Quantitative Economics', July 1995.

"How best to model inflation in India", `Journal of Policy Modeling', October-December 1995.

"The behaviour of the savings rate in the Indian economy since 1991",`Economic and Political Weekly', Special Number, 1996.

"Agriculture and the economic reforms: growth and welfare,” `Economic and Political Weekly,’ March 2000.

"Why did a slump follow land reforms in Kerala?”, `South Asia Economic Journal’, March 2002.

"Growth and distribution in Indian industry in the nineties”, with M. Suresh Babu, ‘Economic and Political Weekly’, September 2003.

"Liberalisation, market power and productivity growth in Indian industry”, with M. Parameswaran, K. Pushpangadan and M. Suresh Babu, `Journal of Policy   Reforms’, March 2006.

"Visible hand: public policy and economic growth in the Nehru era”, ‘Indian Economic Journal’, April-June 2008.

"Globalisation and development: India since 1991”, ‘Journal of Economic Asymmetries’, 2011.

"The Great Reversal: a macro story”, ‘Economic and Political Weekly’, May 2014

"Kerala and the Rest of India: what we can learn from each other’s development experience”, ‘Economic and Political Weekly’, January 2015

"Markets, growth and social opportunity: India since 1991”, ‘Economic and Political Weekly’, January 2017

"The internal dynamic of Indian economic growth”, with Mausumi Das and M.Parameswaran,‘Journal of Asian Economics’, 2017

"Unmoved by stability: Capital formation in the Modi economy", 'Economic and Political Weekly', July 2019

"Growth Transitions in India", with Mausumi Das and M.Parameswaran, 'Economic and Political Weekly', March 2021

"Modelling Inflation in India", with M.Parameswaran, 'Journal of Quantitative Economics', June 2021

"The Importance of Investing in a Public Health System: Evidence from COVID-19 Mortality", with Sreenath Namboodhiry, 'Indian         Economic Review', July 2021

The full list of my articles may be accessed on this site under 'Academic Publications'.

Articles in edited books

"The short-run behaviour of prices and quantities in Indian industry", in `Indian industry: policies and performance', edited by D. Mookherjee, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.

"The current stabilisation programme and the Indian economy ", in `Planning in India', edited by M. Chattopadhyaya, P. Maiti and M. Rakshit, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996.

"The fiscal deficit in macroeconomic perspective", in `Public Finance: Policy Issues for India', edited by S. Mundle, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

"The new fundamentalism in macroeconomic policy", in `Keynes, Keynesianism  and      Political Economy, Essays in Honour of Geoff Harcourt', edited by P. Kriesler  and C. Sardoni, Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy 22, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1998.

"India: Economic policy in the last decade”, `Enciclopedia Italiana’, Roma: Fondata da Giovanni Treccani, 2000.

"Analysing government intervention in foodgrain markets”, with B. Ramaswami, in `Public support for food security’, edited by N. Krishnaji and T.N. Krishnan, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000.

"Land reforms and the question of food in Kerala”, originally the Daniel Thorner  Lecture for 1997, re-printed with a postscript, in ‘Land, Labour and   Rights’, edited by Alice Thorner, New Delhi: Tulika Press, 2003.

"Macroeconomic policy, structural reforms and economic growth in India since 1991”, in ‘Macroeconomic Management and Government Finances’, Delhi: Oxford University Press for the Asian Development Bank, 2009.

"After liberalizing reforms in India: public policy at a crossroads”, in Ashima Goyal  (ed.), ‘Handbook of the Indian Economy in the 21st Century’, New Delh    Oxford University Press, 2013.

"Mainstreaming the Marginalised: Conceptualising the Developmental Challenge in India”,  ‘World Bank Legal Review’, volume 5, 2014.

Reports

`Agricultural incentives in sub-Saharan Africa', Special Office for African  Affairs, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., processed, October 1985

`Report of the Working Group on Non-bank Financial Companies - The Shah Committee', Bombay: Reserve Bank of India, 1992

`The profile of public investment in Ukraine’, with Mark Davis, prepared for the Ukraine: Public Investment Review’, Europe and Central Asia Department, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 1997

Miscellaneous                                     

External Collaborator, EMPRU, International Labour Organisation, Geneva, April-May 1984

Intern, Special Office for African Affairs, The World Bank, Washington D.C., June-September 1985

Research Associate, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley,May-June 1989

Member, Group of Economists convened by the Governor, Reserve Bank of India for consultation on the balance of payments emergency, September 1991

External Expert, Development Research Group, Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai,March-April 1992

Member, Working Group on Non-Bank Financial Companies - The `Shah’Committee, Reserve Bank of India, 1992

Project Leader, "Government operations in foodgrains", ‘Research Project onStrategies and Financing for Human Development', GoI/UNDP, 1994-95

Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville,Tennessee, USA, Fall Semester 2000

Member, Southern India Regional Advisory Committee, Industrial DevelopmentBank of India, 2000-2

Member, Board of Governors, Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, 2000-04

Visiting Professor, Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research, Mumbai,July-September 2004

Visiting Professor, Department of Economics, University College London 2004-5

Visiting Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Winter Semester 2010

Director, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram 2010-13

Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Social Sciences, 2014

Invited Public Lectures 

‘Land Reforms and the Question of Food in Kerala’, 11th Daniel Thorner Memorial Lecture,Thiruvananthapuram 1999; Globalisation, Growth, and Justice’, 2nd Malcolm Adiseshiah Memorial Lecture, delivered at the Madras Christian College, Chennai, 2003; ‘Measurement of Productivity Growth in Indian Manufacturing’, Keynote Address to the 86th Annual Conference of the Indian Economic Association,  Kolhapur  2003; ’India’s Software Success’, Keynote Address at the National Economic Outlook Conference 2006, Malaysian Institute of Economic Research, Kuala Lumpur 2005; ‘The Economic Consequences of Jawaharlal Nehru: A 21st Century View’, 27th Gobind Ballabh Pant Lecture, Allahabad 2012; ‘Making Sense of Democracy’, a TEDxYouth talk, Thiruvananthapuram 2013; ‘Kerala and the Rest of India’, the 27th Achutha Menon Memorial Lecture, Thiruvananthapuram, August 2014; ‘Macroeconomic Reversal in India’, acceptance speech, Malcolm Adiseshiah Award, Chennai, November 2014

General writing

My non-academic publications, including popular economics, are listed on this site under 'General Writing'.