Vidya Mahambare
Union Bank Chair Professor of Economics
Director (Research & Fellow Program in Management)
Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai
Director and Principal Economist, CRISIL (up to 2014)
Email: vidya.m@greatlakes.edu.in
I am an economist and an author based in Chennai, India. My research interests include central banking and monetary policy, structural economic transformations, labour market dynamics and gender economics, which you can read more about here.
My op-ed articles regularly appear in major media outlets such as Mint, BQ Prime, The Times of India, The Hindu BusinessLine, The Economic Times, Business Standard, and The Print, among others, with previous contributions to The Wall Street Journal (Asia).
Two economic ideas remain central to how I think: ‘Incentives matter’ and ‘Trade-offs are everywhere’. These ideas also underpin my long-term project (yet to make a start!) to document thousands of Econselfies submitted by my students over the years, related to these and other key economic principles.
Born in Mumbai and educated across Mumbai, Pune and Lancaster, my academic journey took me to Cardiff Business School, UK. A return to India followed, with CRISIL, before eventually settling in Chennai and returning to academia.
I am grateful to have received two Emergent Ventures grants (with Sowmya Dhanaraj) and deeply admire the work of the Emergent Ventures team led by Tyler Cowen and Shruti Rajagopalan.
Podcast
Lived experiences through the 5 Es: Endowment, Environment, Education, Effort and Equality of opportunity.
There is a substantial body of academic research in economics and psychology on the nature-versus-nurture debate. Yet in the real world, no single factor fully explains how lives turn out. Outcomes are typically the result of multiple forces interacting over time.
In this series, Vidya speaks with thinkers, academicians, and ordinary people who have led extraordinary lives to uncover how the 5 Es define our trajectories: Endowment, Environment, Education, Effort, and Equality of Opportunity, a framework she first articulated in a 2010 op-ed in Mint.
Every conversation moves beyond surface narratives, inviting guests to reflect on what shaped them, what held them back, and what propels individuals and societies forward.
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