Deepak Lal


Deepak Lal was an Indian British neo-liberal economist, originally of India.

Biography

Education and early career

He was born in Lahore on 3 January 1940. He attended The Doon School in Dehradun, India. He graduated in History from Delhi University's St. Stephens College in 1959. Later at Jesus College, Oxford he received the B.A. degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1962, and the B. Phil in Economics in 1965. From 1963 to 1966, overlapping with his time at Oxford, he was a junior member of India's diplomatic corps, the Indian Foreign Service, but resigned.

Later career

In 1966, he taught at Jesus College, Oxford. The 1989 American Economic Review directory lists him as lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford from 1966–68, and as Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford from 1968–70. From 1970 to 1993, he taught at University College London., becoming Professor in 1984. The 1989 American Economic Review directory listed his research interests as "North-South issues, labor markets in developing countries". In 1978, he was a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
Since 1991, he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he served as the James S. Coleman Professor of International Development Studies. He was also a research fellow of the UCLA Center for India and South Asia.
He worked as a consultant to the International Labour Organization, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the Indian Planning Commission, the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Planning Ministries of Sri Lanka and South Korea. He served as Economic Advisor to the World Bank from 1983 to 1984, and as Research Administrator from 1984 to 1987. From 1994 to 1997, he was co-director of the Trade Policy Unit at the Center for Policy Studies. From 1994 to 1998, he was a Chairman of the board of advisors for the Nestle Lecture on the developing world. From 2000 to 2009, he was a member of the UK Shadow Chancellor's Council of Economic Advisors. Since 1999, he was a distinguished visiting fellow at the National Council for Economic Research in New Delhi. He was also a research fellow at the Independent Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute.
He served as President of the Mont Pelerin Society from 2008 to 2010, and also as Senior Vice President.
He received honorary doctorates from the Paul Cézanne University in Aix-en-Provence, France in 2002 and the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima, Peru in 2010. In 2007, he received the Italian Societa Libera's International Freedom Prize for Economics.