Saumitra Jha

Stanford Graduate School of Business

Associate Professor of Political Economy, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Stanford GSB Faculty Profile
Profile at FSI

I’m a professor in the political economy group at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law in the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Affairs (FSI).

I also convene the Conflict and Polarization Lab within the Stanford King Center on Global Development and manage the Democratic Fragility and Conflict program at FSI.

My research focuses upon understanding the effectiveness of organizations and innovations that societies have developed to address the problems of violence and political risk in the past and to develop new lessons for contemporary policy.

I am happy to be affiliated as a professor, by courtesy, of the Stanford Departments of Economics and of Political Science, as a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

I was delighted to be voted the Teacher of the Year by the Stanford GSB Sloan/ MSx class of 2020.

Primary Research Fields

comparative politics, development economics, economic history, political economy

Research Themes

I am currently working on four related streams of research. These research themes include:

Much of my work focuses on and is motivated by issues related to the Political Economy of South Asia, though my current work also includes comparative studies of a number of other key settings undergoing political reform and development.

Here are links to my articles and working papers , to my business cases related to political reform and non-market strategy, and to Op-Eds and pieces for the popular press.

I am happy to be the co-lead for Ethnic Diversity and Nation-Building at the new Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) Initiative, sponsored by the Center for Economic Policy Research and the United Kingdom Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.

I also appreciate the opportunity to serve as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Development Economics and the Journal of Comparative Economics. I also serve on the Editorial Board of the American Political Science Review, Business and Politics and of the Political Economy section of Global Perspectives. You may also find me at the Center for Social Innovation, the Europe Center, the Center for Latin American Studies and the Center for South Asia, and, beyond Stanford, at AALIMS, CEGA and J-PAL.

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