Former CEA Arvind Subramanian is returning to India, to join Ashoka University as economics professor

Arvind Subramanian, the former chief economic adviser to Government of India, is set to join Ashoka University as a professor in the economics department and as founding director of the new Ashoka Centre for economic policy.

Subramanian, on June 26, tweeted that he will start the new assignment beginning July. He is presently the visiting lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School. At Ashoka Centre, Subramanian will engage in research and analysis on policy issues related to India and global development.

I am thrilled that beginning July, I will be joining @AshokaUniv as professor in the economics department and founding director of the Ashoka Center for Economic Policy which will attempt to do research and analysis on India and global development: https://t.co/rkRM6KPcAh

— Arvind Subramanian (@arvindsubraman) June 26, 2020

Last year, Subramanian kicked off a controversy saying India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is overestimated by at least 2.5 percent between 2011-12 and 2016-17 due to a change in methodology for calculating GDP.

Subramanian argued that the GDP growth during this period should be about 4.5 percent instead of the official estimate of close to 7 percent. "India changed its data sources and methodology for estimating real GDP for the period since 2011-12. This paper shows that this change has led to a significant overestimation of growth," Subramanian had stated in his research paper.

"Official estimates place annual average GDP growth between 2011-12 and 2016-17 at about 7 percent. We estimate that actual growth may have been about 4.5 percent with a 95 percent confidence interval of 3.5 - 5.5 percent," Subramanian said.

Subramanian was appointed as the CEA in October 2014 after the post was vacated by Raghuram Rajan who joined the RBI as governor. In 2017, his term was extended by one year by the Narendra Modi government.

His work is widely published in academic journals including the American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics among others.

Subramanian obtained his undergraduate degree from St. Stephens College in Delhi, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, and his M.Phil and D.Phil from the University of Oxford, UK.