Tarun Jain

Tarun Jain is Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, where he currently holds the Reserve Bank of India Chair in Finance & Economics.

He has served as Chair of the Economics Area and of the Centre for Management of Health Services at the Institute. Before joining IIM Ahmedabad, he was on the faculty at the Indian School of Business. He conducts research on understanding causes and consequences of human capital formation (for instance, with health and education), especially in the context of fast-growing developing countries. Gender is a topic of special research interest given that women face persistent barriers in economic advancement. His research has been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Growth Centre and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, and published in peer-reviewed journals such the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Public Economics, and Journal of Economic History. He writes extensively for media outlets such as the Economic Times, Ideas for India and Mint. The Indian Econometric Society awarded him the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal for “outstanding contributions to quantitative economics, while working in India”.

Professor Jain earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Virginia, and his BA in Mathematics and Economics from Franklin and Marshall College. Before his PhD, he was a management consultant with Charles River Associates in Washington DC and Oliver Wyman in Boston.

Professor Jain teaches the core course on Microeconomics as well as electives on Health Economics and EdTech in the MBA program, and a course on Organizational Economics in the PhD program at IIM Ahmedabad. He has written several case studies that are used by universities around the world.