Saumitra Jha

Along with being a Senior Fellow at SIEPR, Saumitra Jha is an Associate Professor of Political Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and, by courtesy, of Economics and of Political Science. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in the Freeman-Spogli Institute.

Saum holds a BA from Williams College, master’s degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. Prior to returning to Stanford, he was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. Saum has been a Fellow of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University and received the Michael Wallerstein Award for best published article in Political Economy from the American Political Science Association in 2014 for his research on ethnic tolerance. Saumitra has consulted on economic and political risk issues for the United Nations/ WTO, the World Bank and other organizations. Having grown up in England, Scotland and the Indian Himalaya, Saum's research interests now take him to  Israel, Japan, Mexico and elsewhere.

Focal Areas: Global Development and Trade, Inequality, Money and Finance, Politics and Media