Shantayanan Devarajan is a nonresident senior fellow with the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings and a professor of the practice of international development at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service.

He spent 28 years at the World Bank, where he was the senior director for development economics; the chief economist of the South Asia, Africa, and Middle East and North Africa regions and of the Human Development Network; and research manager for public economics. Before joining the World Bank, he was on the faculty of Harvard Kennedy School.

The author or co-author of over 150 publications, his research covers public economics, trade policy, natural resources and the environment, political economy, and general-equilibrium modeling of developing countries. Born in Sri Lanka, Shanta received his bachelor’s in mathematics from Princeton University and his doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.