Jayati Ghosh
Professor of Economics | University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA, UNITED STATES
Jayati Ghosh is one of India's best-known economists and a frequent commentator and writer about a wide range of issues.
Expertise (5)
Economics and the Developing World
Economy of India
India
Asian Political Economy
Gender and Care Work
Biography
A prolific columnist and commentator, Jayati Ghosh is of India's best-known economists with a wide range of research interests, including globalization, international trade and finance, employment patterns in developing countries, macroeconomic policy, issues related to gender and development, and the implications of recent growth in China and India. In 2021, Ghosh was appointed by United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to a new high-level advisory board on effective multilateralism.
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Education (4)
University of Cambridge: Ph.D., Economics
University of Cambridge: M.Phil., Economics
Jawaharlal Nehru University: M.A., Economics
University of Delhi: B.A., Honours in Sociology
Links (3)
Select Recent Media Coverage (9)
COP climate conferences have become 'meaningless rituals,' says economist
CBC radio
2024-11-19
It's time for the United Nations to completely re-think its annual climate change conference, says economist Jayati Ghosh. Ghosh, a frequent advisor to the UN, is one of several prominent climate experts and former UN and world leaders who have signed an open letter calling on the organization to completely overhaul the annual event that brings delegates from member countries together to tackle climate change.
Africa’s Debt Crisis Has ‘Catastrophic Implications’ for the World
The New York Times online
2024-08-28
Jayati Ghosh comments in an article about “Africa’s debt crisis. She notes that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank encouraged poor and middle-income countries to embrace Wall Street and seek private loans overseas to fund development in the 2010s, resulting in considerable amounts of debt.
Political Unrest Worldwide Is Fueled by High Prices and Huge Debts
The New York Times print
2024-07-05
Jayati Ghosh comments on global political unrest caused by high prices and huge debts. “Terrible things are happening even in countries where there aren’t protests, but protests kind of make everybody wake up,” she says.
Many young Indians say they haven't benefited from the economic growth Modi boasts of
NPR radio
2023-09-07
Jayati Ghosh says young people in India are not benefitting from the economic growth boasted about by the government. Ghosh says, “Our employment rate has been falling in a period when we’re supposed to growing, and that’s crazy. The recovery package after COVID was oriented to big business. It wasn’t for small and micro enterprises. It wasn’t for self-employed people. The top hundred companies account for 90% of the corporate profits.”
Why It Seems Everything We Knew About the Global Economy Is No Longer True
The New York Times print
2023-06-18
“Financial globalization was supposed to usher in an era of robust growth and fiscal stability in the developing world,” said Jayati Ghosh, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But “it ended up doing the opposite.”
Why do the rich get richer — even during global crises?
Al Jazeera online
2022-12-27
“The easy money policy that began after the global financial crisis led to really low to negative interest rates and big liquidity in the financial system,” Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Al Jazeera. “So, in the past 15 years, corporations chose to reinvest the money into buying more financial assets chasing high returns, rather than increasing their production.”
Why a 1970s-style ‘stagflation’ crisis would hit the world’s poor hard
The Washington Post print
2022-06-09
Economist Jayati Ghosh is quoted in a story about how the world’s poorest will be most impacted by the global economy’s stagflation, a situation where inflation and unemployment rates are high while economic growth is slow.
Poor Countries Face a Mounting Catastrophe Fueled by Inflation and Debt
The New York Times online
2022-05-17
Jayati Ghosh is quoted in a story about poorer countries facing mounting catastrophe fueled by Russia’s war in Ukraine and an economic slowdown in China.
Prices Soar as Corporate Profiteers & Speculators Drive Inflation; It Hurts the Developing World
Democracy Now! online
2022-04-13
Jayati Ghosh appears on a nationally syndicated radio program to discuss how higher inflation is leading to more extreme poverty and how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to commodity price increases.
Select Publications (9)
Weaponizing data against democracy
The Jakarta PostJayati Ghosh
2025-02-17
Jayati Ghosh writes that last week’s visit to the White House by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi underscored the striking similarities between him and President Donald Trump. Ghosh says both govern through the politics of division and intolerance, designed to consolidate power and enrich oligarchic capitalists, with control over data at the heart of the effort.
New Hope for India’s Democracy
Project SyndicateJayati Ghosh
2024-06-10
Jayati Ghosh writes that there is new hope for India’s democracy after the recent election. Ghosh says that while Prime Minister Narendra Modi was given a third consecutive term, his ruling BJP party’s failure to secure a simple majority in the lower house of parliament means Modi will have to rely on several unpredictable allies to promote his legislative agenda.
Why private corporations subvert states
Bangkok PostJayati Ghosh
2023-12-12
“Straight out of a dystopian novel,” is how Jayati Ghosh, describes the current scenario in Honduras in which various private corporations have sued the government for the right to establish their own jurisdictions within the country.
The Myth of Global Grain Shortages
Project SyndicateJayati Ghosh
2023-08-11
Jayati Ghosh writes, "Contrary to popular belief, the war in Ukraine has not led to a global shortage of wheat. While global hunger has surged in recent years, the way to address the current food crisis is by focusing on its real causes: financial speculation and corporate profiteering."
Budget 2023 Has Chilling Implications for India's People
The WireJayati Ghosh
2023-02-02
The annual budget is generally supposed to be a statement of not only the Union government’s actual and proposed revenue raising and spending plans, but also of its general economic policy intent. If so, the indications this year are chilling.
Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity (BOOK)
New Society PublishersJayati Ghosh et al
2022-09-20
Earth For All is both an antidote to despair and a road map to a better future. Using powerful state-of-the-art computer modeling to explore policies likely to deliver the most good for the majority of people, a leading group of scientists and economists from around the world present five extraordinary turnarounds to achieve prosperity for all within planetary limits in a single generation.
The world may be on a path to collapse. Whether it heads there is for us to decide
The Globe and MailJayati Ghosh
2022-07-15
Jayati Ghosh writes that the world may be on a path to collapse without significant economic and social transformations. A new report produced by the Club of Rome’s Transformational Economics Commission, of which Ghosh is a member, and a team of computer modelers, calls for five major initiatives to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality, empower women, transform food systems, and overhaul energy systems by ‘electrifying everything’.
Three lessons from countries that performed best in tackling Covid-19 challenges
South China Morning PostJayati Ghosh and Mariana Mazzucato
2022-05-25
Professor Jayati Ghosh co-authors an opinion piece naming the three key factors in determining a country’s success in handling the pandemic: long-term investment in public health systems, mission-driven leadership and sufficient fiscal space.
The G7’s role in the world
Social EuropeJayati Ghosh
2021-06-21
Jayati Ghosh unpacks the G7 summit in England and finds an anachronistic coalition failing to meet global responsibilities.
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