1. Padma Desai was an Indian-American development economist who was the Gladys and Roland Harriman Professor of comparative economic systems and director of the Center for Transition Economies at Columbia University.
14 Facts About Padma Desai
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Padma Desai was born in Surat, Bombay Presidency, British India, on October 12,1931, into a Gujarati Anavil Brahmin family.
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Padma Desai was a fellow of the American Association of University Women while pursuing her Ph.
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Padma Desai started her career at the Department of Economics, Harvard, after which she was associate professor of economics at Delhi School of Economics at University of Delhi, from 1959 to 1968.
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Padma Desai's 1968 book India: Planning for Industrialization, which was co-written with her future husband and economist Jagdish Bhagwati was an influential critique of India's industrial planning system.
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Padma Desai joined Columbia University as a professor of economics in 1980.
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Padma Desai's research included studying the Soviet economy, specifically studying the command economies and the misallocation of resources therein.
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Padma Desai built on the studies of economists Alexander Gerschenkron and Robert Solow, studying the decelerating growth rates in the Soviet economies, separating the contributions from technology led productivity gains and capital led growth.
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Padma Desai continued to study the Russian economy after the Soviet dissolution and trained US policymakers and continued to speak on Russian economic policies.
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Padma Desai was the US Treasury's advisor to the Russian Finance Ministry in the summer of 1995.
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Padma Desai was president of the Association for Comparative Economic Studies in 2001.
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Padma Desai was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honor, by the Government of India in 2009.
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Padma Desai published her memoir, Breaking Out: An Indian Woman's American Journey in 2012.
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Padma Desai was married to Jagdish Bhagwati, an Indian-American economist and professor of economics and law at Columbia University; the couple had one daughter.