Rohini Pande is the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. She is also the 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, which has influenced policy in South Asia and globally, focuses on how institutions shape power relationships and patterns of economic, political, and environmental advantage in low- and middle-income countries. She is interested in the role of public policy in providing the poor and disadvantaged political and economic power, as well as how notions of economic justice and human rights can legitimize and enable such change. With Inclusion Economics India Center, she is working with Indian state governments on gender-inclusive rural development and digital policies and with Inclusion Economics Nepal Center she is evaluating policies to strengthen quality of policy-making by elected local governments.