Basu has held visiting professorships at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Harvard University, the
Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey, the
Université catholique de Louvain's
Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) in
Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and the
London School of Economics, where he was a distinguished visitor in 1993. Additionally, he was a visiting scientist at the
Indian Statistical Institute, a
public university in Kolkata. Basu was the Chief Economic Adviser to India's Ministry of Finance while on leave from Cornell University where he is Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies. A Fellow of the
Econometric Society and recipient of the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal, Basu has published scientific papers in
development economics,
game theory,
industrial organisation,
political economy, the economics of
child labour, and crafted the
traveller's dilemma. In 1992 he founded the Centre for Development Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, and served as its first executive director until 1996. Basu is a columnist for
BBC News Online, the
Hindustan Times, Business Standard and is the author of several books on economics and a play,
Crossings at Benaras Junction, which was published in
The Little Magazine (vol. 6, 2005). He is the editor of the Oxford Companion to Economics in India, published by
Oxford University Press (February 2007), a compendium on the Indian economy. On 5 September 2012, he was appointed Chief Economist at the
World Bank. Basu was the president of the Human Development and capabilities association founded by Amartya Sen. He is the Editor of
Social Choice and Welfare, Associate Editor of
Japanese Economic Review, and is on the Board of Editors of the
World Bank Economic Review. He was elected to take over as president of the International Economic Association in June 2017, for a three-year term. Basu is the motivation behind
Arthapedia, an online portal that provide explanations to the concepts used in Indian public policy to assist its understanding among citizens. He created Dui-doku, a competitive two-player version of
Sudoku. While working at the World Bank, Basu also taught courses on game theory at the
George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He writes monthly columns for
Project Syndicate. He has been the on the Social Sciences jury for the
Infosys Prize from 2011, serving as Jury Chair from 2012. Basu teaches at Cornell University, where he has a joint appointment as an economics professor in the Department of Economics and the SC Johnson College of Business.
Economic and political views Basu has written on the importance of Adam Smith's identification of the invisible hand of the market and how that helps coordinate the self-interested behaviour of individuals to achieve order and optimality in an economy. He feels that this is such an unexpected finding that it led many traditional economists to overlook and then forget that moral qualities, like honesty, fairness, and integrity are critical for an economy to flourish. They are the nuts and bolts that enable the invisible hand to be effective. Basu also feels the need to promote quality thinking in government and public debate. Basu has written in favour of Marx's ideal of a society where each person gets according to their need and gives according to their ability. He argues in his book,
Beyond the Invisible Hand, that the fault lies not in the Marxist aspiration but in using the wrong blueprint to get to such an ideal. Some of the biggest blunders in history have been made from attempting to get to this ideal without a scientific roadmap. This is the reason why radical movements such as the one in the USSR began trying to build a humane, socialist society and ended up with crony capitalism. Basu has recently worked on our collective moral responsibility and the role that individuals play in fulfilling them.
Views on bribery In his paper, 'Why, for a class of Bribes, the act of
Giving Bribes should be treated as legal", Basu refers to certain bribes as 'Harassment Bribes' that are given to get what a person is legally entitled to such as a ration card or a passport. In such cases, only the act of taking a bribe should be illegal. This will cause a divergence in the interests of the bribe giver and taker and the bribe giver will be willing to co-operate to help the bribe taker get caught. This view has been under a lot of public debate. ==Personal life==