Jagdish Bhagwati

Jagdish Bhagwati, born in Bombay in 1934, is an Indian-American economist and professor at Columbia University known for his contributions to the theory of international trade, including formal work on how trade protection and other policy distortions affect welfare. He has been one of the most prominent academic advocates for free trade and globalization, arguing that open trade properly governed is a powerful force for reducing poverty, a position that has drawn sustained criticism from economists who hold that globalization has worsened inequality within countries even where it has raised income in the aggregate. He taught at the Delhi School of Economics from 1962 to 1968 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1968 to 1980 before joining Columbia in 1980.