D School alumnus named professor at Harvard

WASHINGTON - Gita Gopinath, a Delhi School of Economics alumnus, has been named professor of economics at Harvard University, becoming the first Indian-origin woman professor in the institution’s history.

Kolkata born Gopinath, 38, is considered an authority on business cycles in emerging markets and on price fluctuations across international borders. She was previously associate professor of economics at Harvard, where she has been a member of the faculty since 2005.

“Professor Gopinath’s research on emerging markets has proven extremely important to our understanding of their business cycles, and her studies of price stickiness have been highly influential among macroeconomists,” said Stephen Kosslyn, dean of social science in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

“Here on campus, she has played a central role in the vitality of our program in international economics, and especially in teaching and advising students in this field,” he said.

“Her success placing graduate students in top-tier institutions testifies both to her skill as a mentor and to her colleagues’ broad interest in her research agenda.”

Gopinath’s research on emerging markets has addressed income fluctuations in these economies. Together with Mark Aguiar of the University of Rochester, Gopinath has developed a model which has ultimately shown that stochastic elements of productivity are much larger in emerging markets than in developed markets.

Gopinath received a BA in economics from the University of Delhi in 1992; master’s degrees in economics from the Delhi School of Economics and the University of Washington in 1994 and 1996, respectively; and a PhD in economics from Princeton University in 2001.

She was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business from 2001 to 2005, when she joined Harvard as an assistant professor of economics. She was named associate professor at Harvard in 2009.

Gopinath is an associate of the National Bureau for Economic Research, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the International Growth Centre at the London School of Economics and Oxford University, and Harvard’s Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs.

Earlier this month, IIT alumnus Nitin Nohria took over as the 10th Dean of Harvard Business School (HBS). At HBS itself, Nohria is among some 25 teachers of Indian-origin in a faculty of just over 200.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)