Jagdish Bhagwati

Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati (English: Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati, born July 26, 1934) is an Indian-American economist and one of the most influential trade theorists of his generation. He is a University Professor of Economics and Law at Columbia University and a Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He made significant contributions to international trade theory and economic development. Bhagwati is widely regarded as the intellectual father of India's 1991 economic reforms. He is the only person in American academia to have a professor named after him while he was still teaching at the university. He is one of only 10 scholars at Columbia University to hold the title of school-level professor. Bhagwati has received several prestigious awards, including the Order of the Rising Sun, the Padma Shri, the Frank Seidman Prize for Excellence in Political Economy, and the Swiss Freedom Prize. In 2014, the Financial Times called him "one of the most outstanding economists of his generation who has never won a Nobel Prize." His peers, including Nobel laureate Paul Kluman, agree. “For me, the key point is that it was not clear at all how the distortions in the trade economy related to policy until Jagdish put it out there. Once he did, it became so clear that it was hard to believe that someone had to point it out. To me, that makes his work Nobel Prize worthy.”