Academic Krishnamurthy Subramanian is India's new chief economic adviser

New Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian teaches at Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad and has a PhD from Chicago-Booth

Academic Krishnamurthy Subramanian will be the government’s new chief economic adviser and he will have a three-year tenure, it was announced on Friday.

Subramanian teaches at Indian School of Business (ISB) as an associate professor of finance (with tenure). He has a PhD from Chicago-Booth and is an expert in banking, corporate governance and economic policy, says his profile page on Indian School of Business’s website.

Subramanian's seven-page CV on ISB's website says his dissertation was on 'boundary decisions and financing choices in human capital intensive firms’. Interestingly, former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan was among the four committee members before whom Subramanian defended his dissertation.

Subramanian, according to his LinkedIn page, knows six languages: Bengali, English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu. He has been published in the world’s leading journals. His PhD dissertation earned the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Dissertation Fellowship.

He was the top ranker at Indian Institute of Management Calcutta which awarded him an honour roll “for the most balanced outlook to business problems”. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur.

He is on the expert committees on Corporate Governance for the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and on Governance of Banks for RBI. He is a member of SEBI’s Standing Committees on Alternative Investment Policy, Primary Markets, Secondary Markets and Research. He also serves on the boards of Bandhan Bank, the National Institute of Bank Management, and the RBI Academy.

Subramanian, in a co-authored article for the Mint newspaper on November 23, 2016, rejected political opposition to demonetisation on the grounds that it hurt the poor. "...we infer that the politicians advocating the difficulties faced by the poor are being disingenuous in pushing their claims for political gains," he wrote.

Subramanian replaces Arvind Subramanian, who resigned in June after a four-year tenure.