Jagdish Bhagwati

Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati (born July 26, 1934) is an Indian-born naturalized 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 has made significant contributions to international trade theory and economic development.

He is widely regarded as the intellectual father of the Indian economic reforms of 1991. He is the only professor in American academia to have a chair named after him while he was still teaching at the university. He is one of only 10 scholars who hold the title of University Professor at Columbia University. Bhagwati is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Order of the Rising Sun, Padma Vibhushan, Frank Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy and the Freedom Prize of Switzerland.

In 2014, the Financial Times called him “one of the most outstanding economists of his generation never to have won the Nobel Prize”. This view is shared by his peers including Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, "The crucial point for me is that people didn’t understand at all clearly how distortions in a trading economy relate to policy before Jagdish spelled it out. Once he did, it became so clear that it was hard to believe that someone had to point it out. In my view, that makes his work Nobel-worthy."