Rohini Pande

Rohini Pande is the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University and faculty director of Inclusion Economics at Yale. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Econometric Society fellow, and a former co-editor of American Economic Review: Insights. Pande received the 2018 Carolyn Bell Shaw Award from the American Economic Association for promoting the success of women in the economics profession and the 2022 Infosys Prize in Social Sciences. Formerly, Pande was the Rafik Harriri Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Pande’s research examines how institutions shape power relationships and patterns of economic, political, and environmental advantage in low- and middle-income countries. Her work focuses on institutional design as a key technology for improving human welfare, and asks how notions of economic justice and human rights, along with efficiency gains, can legitimize and enable institutional change.

With Inclusion Economics India Center, she is working with Indian state governments on gender-inclusive rural development, on payments for ecosystem services, and on digital innovations to improve governance. With Inclusion Economics Nepal she is evaluating innovations to strengthen quality of policy-making by elected local governments.

With colleagues from Yale, Chicago, and MIT, Pande has collaborated with the State Government of Gujarat on establishing India’s first regulated pollution market. Recently, she led the sub-committee on carbon markets for the COP30 presidency, presenting a report on the case for a unified global carbon market.

Pande received a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics, a BA/MA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University, and a BA in Economics from Delhi University.