Abishek Choutagunta is currently pursuing dual PhD degrees in Law and Economics at the University of Hamburg. He is an Emergent Ventures India Fellow at the Mercatus Center. His research interests revolve around political economy and the economic analysis of constitutional frameworks. His specific focus lies in studying federalism, public finance, and local governance in India. He holds a Master’s in economics from Madras School of Economics, as well as a Master’s in Law and Economics from Erasmus University of Rotterdam, University of Hamburg, and Warsaw School of Economics via the European Master’s in Law and Economics Program.

Alex Tabarrok holds the Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and is a professor of economics at George Mason University and research fellow with the Mercatus Center. Alex’s research interests include empirical law and economics (crime, tort reform, bounty hunters, judicial electoral systems etc.), voting theory and alternative political institutions, health economics and more. Alex is the coauthor, with colleague Tyler Cowen, of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and cofounder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University.

C. Rangarajan, a distinguished Indian economist, served as the 19th Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and held the roles of Member of Parliament, Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, and Chairman of the 12th Finance Commission. He also served as the Governor of several Indian states. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Madras School of Economics. After completing his doctoral studies in economics at the University of Pennsylvania, he taught at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad before joining the RBI. During his tenure, he implemented crucial reforms, such as adopting market-determined exchange rates and opening up the Indian banking sector, contributing to India's transformation into an open economy.

Deepak VS is a mechatronics engineer. He started a university club at eighteen that evolved into his startup, Tilt. Tilt brings cycling to hundreds of gated communities across India today. He has over 7 years of experience building a hardware business in India focused on fitness and mobility. He has raised capital from VCs like Y Combinator, ANIM, and dozens of prominent angels.

Karthik Muralidharan is the Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He holds AB and PhD degrees in Economics from Harvard and an MPhil in Economics from Cambridge, UK. He is a Research Associate of the NBER and a Board Member and Global Co-Chair of Education at JPAL. His research aims to understand/improve the effectiveness of public expenditure and service delivery in developing countries. He is also the Founder and Scientific Director of the Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States (CEGIS). His book on “Accelerating India's Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance” will be released by Penguin in late 2023.

Kshitij Batra is CEO and Co-Founder of the Terra Economics & Analytics Lab (TEAL), a technology startup digitizing land and property records in India. He has previously served as Additional Private Secretary to the Government of India, and worked at the IDFC Institute, Housing.com, the World Bank in Washington DC, and the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) and NERA Economic Consulting in New York. He holds a Master’s in Public Administration, International Development (MPA/ID) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Bachelor’s in Economics with Honors from Grinnell College.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, an economist and civil servant, held various positions in the Government of India, including Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission; Member of Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council; and Finance Secretary. He also held several roles at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Currently, he is a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress in New Delhi. An alumnus of Oxford University, he has published papers in professional journals and contributed to books. He is the author of the M-document, which provided a blueprint for India’s economic reforms in 1991. In 2019, he published his memoir, “Backstage: The story of India’s high growth years”.

Prasanta Kumar Ghosh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc). He holds a PhD from the University of Southern California. He has approximately 20 years of research experience in science and technology related to speech, audio, and language, particularly in Indian languages. He has taken up major initiatives for creating open-sourced resources and models in Indic languages through projects like RESPIN, SYSPIN and Vaani.

Rahul Sagar is a Global Network Associate Professor of Political Science at NYU Abu Dhabi. Previously, he taught at Yale NUS College, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and Princeton University. His books include “To Raise a Fallen People: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Indian Views of the World”, “The Progressive Maharaja: Sir Madhava Rao’s Hints on the Art and Science of Government”, and “Secrets and Leaks: The Dilemma of State Secrecy”. His research has appeared in various journals, edited volumes, and media outlets around the world. He holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University and a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford.

Rohit Lamba is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Penn State University. He received a PhD in economics from Princeton University. He publishes regularly in leading academic journals and newspapers. He has also worked for the Office of the Chief Economic Advisor under two different Chief Economic Advisors to the Government of India.

Rukmini S is an award-winning data communicator and author. She was the Data Editor of The Hindu and HuffPost India, and is the author of the book “Whole Numbers and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India”. She is the Director of Datarivu, a data storytelling start-up, and Founder of Data For India, an Indian public data platform.

Shamika Ravi is a Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and Secretary to Government of India. Previously, she held senior positions at Brookings India, the Observer Research Foundation, and the Brookings Institution. Her research focuses on economics of development including areas of finance, healthcare, urbanization, gender equality, and welfare and poverty. She has also taught at various schools across India, including the Indian School of Business and BITS School of Management. She publishes extensively in academic journals and media outlets. She holds a PhD from New York University, a Master’s from Delhi School of Economics, and a Bachelor’s degree from the Lady Shri Ram College for Women, all in economics.

Shruti Rajagopalan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a Fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University School of Law. She leads the Indian Political Economy research program and Emergent Ventures India at Mercatus. She was an Associate Professor of Economics at Purchase College, State University of New York. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University in 2013. Additionally, she has a BA (hons) in Economics and an LL.B. from University of Delhi and an LL.M. from the European Masters in Law and Economics Program at University of Hamburg, Ghent University, and University of Bologna.

Susan Thomas studied civil engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, economics at University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and was faculty at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) in Mumbai. She is now Co-Founder at XKDR Forum. She does quantitative and policy-oriented research in the fields of finance, government contracting, and courts, approaching these questions in an inter-disciplinary fashion. She participated in the policy process in the equity market reforms in the 1990s and 2000s, and the bankruptcy reforms of the 2010s.

Tyler Cowen is the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and faculty director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. With colleague Alex Tabarrok, Tyler is coauthor of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and cofounder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University. Tyler is the author of several bestselling books and is widely published in academic journals and the popular media. His latest book is Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World, co-authored with Daniel Gross. Tyler hosts the podcast Conversations with Tyler and writes a column for Bloomberg View. Tyler graduated from George Mason University with a BS in economics and received his PhD in economics from Harvard University.

V. Anantha Nageswaran is Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. He writes a weekly column for Mint and has co-authored four books. He has taught at several business schools in India and Singapore, and has served on various Academic Advisory Boards. He was a Co-Founder of Aavishkaar Venture Capital Fund and the Takshashila Institution, and a Part-Time Member of India’s Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. In his corporate career, he held senior positions at the Union Bank of Switzerland, Credit Suisse, Asia Research, and Julius Baer. He was an Independent Director on the boards of various organizations including TVS Supply Chain Solutions and Aparajitha Corporate Services. He received a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, and a PhD from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.