October 2007

Maitreesh Ghatak

Department of Economics
London School
of Economics

Houghton Street, London

WC2A 2AE, U.K.

Telephone: (44) 207 852 3568

m.ghatak@lse.ac.uk

http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/mghatak/

 

 

 

Education 

 

1986-1989 : Presidency College, University of Calcutta, B.Sc. (Econ.), First Class, First in University.  

 

1989-1991 : Delhi School of Economics, University of   Delhi, M.A.(Econ.), First Class, First in University.   

 

1991-1996 : Harvard University, Cambridge Mass., Ph.D. in Economics.  

Principal Current Position

Professor:  Department of Economics, London School of Economics (2004 –)

Professional Affiliations/Activities

Director (2005 – ): Economic Organization and Public Policy Program (EOPP) in STICERD

 

Managing Editor (2003-2006): Review of Economic Studies 

 

Member of Editorial Board (2002-): Review of Economic Studies 

 

Co-editor (2003-2005): Economics of Transition

 

Member of Editorial Board (2001- ): Economica.

 

Member of Editorial Board (2003- ): India Macroeconomics Annual.

 

Senior Fellow (2002 -): Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (B.R.E.A.D.)

 

Research Fellow:  Centre for Economic Policy Research (C.E.P.R.), Program in Public Policy & Development Economics

   

Research Associate:  The Leverhulme Centre for Market and Public Organisation (CMPO), University of Bristol.

 

Programme Committee: European Economic Association Annual Meetings, Stockholm, 2003.

 

Programme Committee: 9th World Congress of the Econometric Society, UCL, 2005

 

Programme Committee: B.R.E.A.D. Conference, Washington DC, April 2005.

Past Positions

Assistant Professor: Department of Economics, University of Chicago (1996 –2002)

Reader (Associate Professor with tenure)Department of Economics, London School of Economics (2002 – 2004)

Visiting Positions 

Visiting Professor: Yale University, April 2007.

 

Visiting Scientist:  Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, July-August 2006. 

 

Visiting Fellow:  International/Development Visitor Program for 2003/2004, Department of Economics, Northwestern University, Chicago, Spring 2003-04. 

 

Bhabatosh Datta Visiting Fellow: Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, May-July 2002

 

Member: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Academic Year 2000-01.

 

Visiting Assistant Professor: London School of Economics, January-March 1999.

 

Post-Doctoral Fellow: STICERD, London School of Economics, July-September 1996

Fields of Interest

Applied Micro, Development Economics, Public Organizations

Teaching

Economic Growth and Development (Graduate and undergraduate), Contracts and Organizations (Graduate), & Microeconomics (Undergraduate).

PUBLICATIONS

Development Economics

 

Refereed Publications    

1. "Group Lending, Local Information and Peer Selection". Journal of Development Economics , Vol.60, No.1, October 1999.

 

2. "The Economics of Lending with Joint Liability : Theory and Practice", (with Timothy W. Guinnane). Journal of Development Economics, Vol.60, No.1, October 1999 (See also erratum in Volume 69,   Issue 1, October 2002). [Reprinted in Readings in the Theory of Economic Development (ed.s) D. Mookherjee and D. Ray, London: Blackwell (2000).] 

 

3. "Screening by the Company You Keep: Joint Liability Lending and the Peer Selection Effect". Economic Journal, Vol.110, Issue 465, July 2000.

 

4. "Contract Choice in Agriculture with Joint Moral Hazard in Effort and Risk", (with Priyanka Pandey). Journal of Development Economics, Vol.63, No.2, December 2000.

 

5. "Occupational Choice and Dynamic Incentives" (with Massimo Morelli and Tomas Sjostrom). Review of Economic Studies,  Vol. 68, No. 4, October 2001, p. 781-810.

 

6. "Financially Interlinked Business Groups", (with Raja Kali). Journal of Economics and Management Strategy . Vol. 10, Issue 4, p. 591-619, Winter 2001.

 

7. Empowerment and Efficiency: Tenancy Reform in West Bengal", (with Abhijit V. Banerjee and Paul J. Gertler). Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 110, No. 2, April 2002, p. 239-280 [Lead article; Featured in the article "Free Market Thumbs up for Bengal's Operation Barga", The Times of India, July 19, 2001, and "Barga Works, OK", The Times of India, August 27, 2004.]  

 

8. A Simple Model of Inequality, Occupational Choice and Development", (with Nien-Huei Jiang). Journal of Development Economics, Volume 69, Issue 1, October 2002.

 

9. "On the Inverse Relationship between Farm Size and Productivity" (with Juliano Assuncao). Economics Letters , Volume 80, No. 2, pp.189-194, August 2003.

 

10. "Eviction Threats and Investment Incentives" (with Abhijit V. Banerjee), Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 74, No.2, pp. 469-488, August 2004.

 

11. "Joint Liability Lending and the Peer Selection Effect", (with S. Gangopadhyay and R. Lensink), Economic Journal , October 2005. 

 

12. "Subcontractors for Tractors: Asset Specificity and Contracting in a Manufacturer-Supplier Network" (with Asim Khwaja, and Tahir Andrabi). Journal of Development Economics . Volume 79, No. 2, pp. 273-492, April 2006.  [Lead article]

 

13. "Entrepreneurial Talent, Occupational Choice, and Trickle Up Policies" (with Massimo Morelli and Tomas Sjostrom). Forthcoming, Journal of Economic Theory.

 

14. "Wealth Inequality and Collective Action" (with Pranab Bardhan and Alexander Karaivanov), Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 91, No. 9, p. 1843–1874.

 

 

Other Publications

1.      "Diversified Business Groups in Emerging Economies" (with R. Kali), Money and Finance, Vol.2, No. 4, Oct.-Dec. 2000. 

2.      Recent Reforms in the Panchayat System in West Bengal: Toward Greater Participatory Governance?” (with Maitreya Ghatak). Economic and Political Weekly of India, Vol 37, No 1, January 5, 2002.   [Reprinted in Decentralisation: Institutions and Politics in Rural India (ed.s) Satyajit Singh and Pradeep K. Sharma, Oxford University Press, Delhi.]

3.      “Strategy for Economic Reform in West Bengal”  (with Abhijit Banerjee, Pranab Bardhan, Kaushik Basu, Mrinal Datta-Chaudhuri, Ashok Guha, Mukul Majumdar, Dilip Mookherjee, and Debraj Ray), Economic and Political Weekly of India, Vol. 37, No. 41 October 12, 2002. 

4.      "Inequality and Collective Action " (with P. Bardhan and A. Karaivanov) Forthcoming in P. Bardhan, S. Bowles and J. M. Baland (ed.) Economic Inequality, Collective Action, and Environmental Sustainability, Princeton University Press, 2006.

5.      “Public Goods and Economic Development’’ (with T. Besley), in Understanding Poverty, (A. Banerjee, R. Benabou, D. Mookherjee, eds.), Oxford University Press, 2006.

6.      “Land Reform”, entry in The Oxford Companion to Economics in India edited by Kaushik Basu, Oxford University Press, 2007.

7.      “Land Reform and Agricultural Productivity in India: A Review of the Evidence” (with S. Roy), Oxford Review of Economic Policy , special issue on the Indian Economy, 2007, 23: 251-269.

8.      “Property Rights” (with T. Besley) forthcoming, in D. Rodrik and M. Rosenzweig (ed.s) Handbook of Development Economics, North Holland.

Public Organizations

 

Refereed Publications    

1.    "Government versus Private Ownership of Public Goods", (with Tim Besley). Quarterly Journal of Economics , Vol. 116, No. 4, p.1343 – 1372, November 2001. 

 

2.     "Competition and Incentives with Motivated Agents" (with Tim Besley). American Economic Review, Vol. 95, No. 3, pp. 616-636, June 2005.

 

3.    "Retailing Public Goods: The Economics of Corporate Social Responsibility" (with Tim Besley). Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 91, No. 9, p. 16451663 [Lead article]

 

Other Publications

1.      “Incentives and Accountability in the Provision of Public Services’’ (with Tim Besley), Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol. 19 (2): Financing and Managing Public Services, Summer 2003.

2.      “Incentives, risk and accountability in organizations” (with Tim Besley), in Organizational Encounters with Risk (ed.s) Bridget Hutter and Michael Power, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

3.       “Who should provide public goods? A Perspective from the Theory of Organizations?” Development, Displacement and Disparity - India in the Last Quarter of the Century, (ed.s) S. Marjit and N. Banerjee, Orient Longman, 2005. 

4.       “Sorting with Motivated Agents:  Implications for School Competition and Teacher Incentives” (with T. Besley), Journal of the European Economic Association, Papers and Proceedings, 2006.

5.      “Reforming Public Service Delivery” (with T. Besley), forthcoming, Journal of African Economics.

WORKING PAPERS

 

1.      “Credit Rationing, Wealth Inequality, and Allocation of Talent” (with Massimo Morelli and Tomas Sjostrom). Version: October 2002, STICERD Theoretical Economics Discussion Paper TE/2002/441.

2.      "Gun Control and the Self-Defense Argument", Version: January 2001. 

3.      “Public-Private Partnership for the Provision of Public Goods: Theory and an Application to NGOs” (with Tim Besley), Version: August 1999, STICERD Development Economics Discussion Paper Series, DEDPS 17.

 

WORK IN PROGRESS

 

1.      “The De Soto Effect:  Property Rights, Social Networks and Productivity” (with Tim Besley).

2.      “Public Organizations” (with Tim Besley). 

3.      “Arranged Marriages and Caste in India” (with Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Jeanne Lafortune)

4.      "Contractual Structure in Agriculture with Endogenous Matching” (with Alexander Karaivanov).  .

5.      “Exit, Voice and Secrecy: Property Rights in a Theory of Taxation” (with Tim Besley)

6.      “Optimal Social Distance in Informal Contracting” (with Massimo Morelli and Tomas Sjostrom)

7.      "Informational Externalities, Reputation and Discrimination". 

8.      Tenant Heterogeneity and the Unequal Effects of Agrarian Reform: Theory and Evidence" (with Abhijit V. Banerjee and Paul Gertler).

 

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

Op-Ed article on the recent trends in the U.S. economy (with Parikshit Ghosh), The Telegraph, Calcutta, June 4, 1999. 

 

Op-Ed article on the increase in West Bengal’s agricultural productivity and the role of agrarian reform (in Bengali) (with Abhijit Banerjee), Ananda Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, April 20, 2000. 

 

Op-Ed article on an economic plan for the West Bengal government (with Abhijit Banerjee, Pranab Bardhan, Kaushik Basu, Mrinal Datta-Chaudhuri, Ashok Guha, Mukul Majumdar, Dilip Mookherjee, and Debraj Ray) The Telegraph, Calcutta, May 13, 2001. 

 

Op-Ed article on industrial stagnation in West Bengal (with Abhijit Banerjee, Pranab Bardhan, Kaushik Basu, Mrinal Datta-Chaudhuri, Ashok Guha, Mukul Majumdar, Dilip Mookherjee, and Debraj Ray) published serially in The Telegraph, Calcutta, July 02-11, 2001 and (in Bengali) in the Ananda Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, June 17-21, 2001. 

 

Op-Ed article on the policy of banning private tuition in West Bengal (with Sugata Marjit) in The Telegraph, Calcutta, June 29, 2002

 

Op-Ed article on the 2004 US Presidential Election (in Bengali), Anandabazar Patrika, Calcutta, November 14, 2004.

AWARDS, GRANTS AND PRIZES

ESRC Large Grant RES-000-23-0717 “Competition and Incentives in Public Service Provision” (with T. Besley) 2004-06.

 

Visiting Fellowship, Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, Summer 2002.

 

Visiting Fellowship, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, 2000-01.

 

University of Chicago, Social Science Division Dean's Research Grant, 2001-02. 

 

Mellon Cultural Training and Research Grant for field survey in West Bengal, 1999. 

 

Post Doctoral Fellowship, STICERD, London School of Economics, Summer 1996. 

 

The Simon Kuznets Award, 1993, Harvard University.

 

 

Completed Theses Supervised (with initial placement) 

 

Principal Advisor to: Neville  Nien-Huei Jiang (Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University) Rocco Macchiavello (Post-doc, Nuffield College, Oxford), Masayuki Kudamatsu (Assistant Professor, IIES, Stockholm), Emmanuel Frot (Assistant Professor, SITE, Stockholm School of Economics), Paolo Masella (Post-doc, European University Institute, Florence)

Member of Thesis Committee: Christopher Ahlin (Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University), Kumar Aniket (Lecturer, New Hall and Trinity College, Cambridge University), Xavier Gine (World Bank), Hyeok Jeong (Assistant Professor, University of Southern California), Alexander Karaivanov (Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University), Priyanka Pandey (Assistant Professor, Penn State), Kenichi Ueda (I.M.F.), Ankur Vora (Boston Consulting Group).