Krishna Kumar is vice president, International; Distinguished Chair in International Economic Policy; and a senior economist at the RAND Corporation. He is also a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, where he teaches economic development. He previously directed RAND’s Labor and Population research unit.
Kumar has led or co-led projects to develop a blueprint for the economic development of North Korea, advance global citizenship in America, find mutually beneficial opportunities for Syrian refugees and host countries in the Middle East, study informal labuor markets in Bangladesh, develop a comprehensive model of U.S. labour market inequality, calculate the gross regional product of the Kurdistan Region–Iraq, implement a labour force survey to collect data for the Kurdistan Regional Government to understand the region’s unemployment rate, and develop a data collection system. He has conducted a randomized control trial evaluation of an agricultural training program in China to improve farmer decisions and evaluated the socioeconomic impact on the working poor of moving into permanent housing in India. He has also studied the effect of U.S. federal funding of life sciences research on university R&D and commercialization, the role of economic and social policies in Mexico’s development, and public policy on Indian entrepreneurship, and conducted a comparative analysis of the Indian and Chinese education systems.
Kumar holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and has had research published in leading journals focusing on economic growth and development and macroeconomics.
Established in 1998 in Bonn, Germany, IZA is an independent, non-profit research institution supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation with a focus on the analysis of global labour markets. It operates an international network of about 1,500 economists and researchers spanning across more than 50 countries.
Based on academic excellence and an ambitious publication strategy, IZA serves as a place of communication between academic science and political practice.
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) leads the UK's work to end extreme poverty. We're ending the need for aid by creating jobs, unlocking the potential of girls and women, and helping to save lives when humanitarian emergencies hit.
FCDO is a ministerial department, supported by 12 agencies and public bodies.