Debraj Ray (economist)

Debraj Ray
Debraj Ray in 2020.
Born (1957-09-03) 3 September 1957 (age 67)
NationalityIndian
CitizenshipUnited States
Academic career
FieldGame Theory
Development Economics
InstitutionNew York University
School or
tradition		Game theory
Alma materUniversity of Calcutta (B.A.)
Cornell University (M.A., Ph.D.)
Doctoral
students		Rohini Somanathan

Debraj Ray[1] (born 3 September 1957) is an Indian-American economist, who is currently teaching and working at New York University. His research interests focus on development economics and game theory. Ray served as Co-editor of the American Economic Review between 2012 and 2020.

Ray is Julius Silver Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science, New York University, since 2003,[2] and Professor of Economics at New York University since 1999. He is also a Part-Time Professor at the University of Warwick. He is a Research Affiliate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a council member of the Game Theory Society, and a board member of Theoretical Research in Development Economics (ThReD). He served as a Board Member at the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), since its inception till 2023.

Education

Debraj Ray graduated from the University of Calcutta, where he earned a B.A. in Economics in 1977. After that, Ray obtained a M.A. (1981) and a Ph.D. (1983) both from Cornell University, where his doctoral supervisor was Mukul Majumdar. The title of his dissertation is Essays in Intertemporal Economics.

Academic career

Prior to joining NYU, Ray held academic positions at Stanford University, the Indian Statistical Institute, and at Boston University, where he was Director of the Institute for Economic Development. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, MIT, the Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the People's University of China in Beijing, the London School of Economics, Columbia University, the Instituto de Análisis Económico in Barcelona and the University of Oslo.

Notable contributions by Ray include:

  • a leading textbook in Development Economics (Ray 1998).

Professional affiliations and awards

Ray is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Fellow of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, a Fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal, and a recipient of the Outstanding Young Scientists Award in mathematics from the Indian National Science Academy.[3] He was awarded a Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa from the University of Oslo in 2011.[4]

Apart from three terms as Co-editor of the American Economic Review,[5] Ray has served on the editorial board of Econometrica, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Economic Growth, the Japanese Economic Review, Games and Economic Behavior, American Economic Journal Microeconomics. He has served as a Foreign Editor of the Review of Economic Studies, and as Co-editor of the Econometric Society journal, Theoretical Economics.

Among Ray's many public lectures are the 2013 Sir Richard Stone Annual Lecture at the University of Cambridge, the 2016 Laffont Lecture of the Econometric Society (Geneva), the 2017 Richard Ely Distinguished Lectures at Johns Hopkins University, the 2022 Haavelmo Lecture at the University of Oslo, and the inaugural Ashok Kotwal Memorial Lecture (Ideas for India, New Delhi, 2022).

Ray has received many awards for his teaching and research from different institutions around the world. Among them are:

Bibliography

Books

  • Ray, Debraj (1990). Dutta, B.; Gangopadhyay, S.; Mookherjee, D. (eds.). Economic Theory and Policy: Essays in Honour of Dipak Banerji. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
  • Ray, Debraj (1992). Dutta, B.; Mookherjee, D.; Parthasarathy, T.; Raghavan, T.; Tijs, S. (eds.). Game Theory and Economic Applications. New Delhi: Springer Verlag.
  • Ray, Debraj (1993). Dutta, B.; Gangopadhyay, S.; Mookherjee, D. (eds.). Theoretical Issues in Economic Development. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
  • Ray, Debraj (1997). Dutta, B.; Potters, J.; Parthasarathy, T.; Sen, A. (eds.). Game-Theoretical Applications to Economics and Operations Research. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
  • Ray, Debraj (1998). Development Economics. Princeton University Press.
  • Ray, Debraj (2000). Mookherjee, D. (ed.). Readings in the Theory of Economic Development. London: Blackwell.
  • Ray, Debraj; Bose, A.; Sarkar, A. (2001). Contemporary Macroeconomics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
  • Ray, Debraj (2008). A Game-Theoretic Perspective on Coalition Formation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Selected Journal Articles

Notes

  1. ^ "Debraj Ray". Debraj Ray, Department of Economics, New York University. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
  2. ^ For a list of Silver Professors at NYU and a description of their work at the time of award, see https://as.nyu.edu/people/silverprofessors.html
  3. ^ See https://insaindia.res.in/old_website/youngmedal.php
  4. ^ See https://www.sv.uio.no/esop/english/research/news-and-events/news/2011/ray.html
  5. ^ See https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/aer/about-aer/editors