Karthik Muralidharan

Karthik Muralidharan is Tata Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in Economics at the University of California San Diego. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a fellow of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, a board member and co-chair of the education program at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), an affiliate at the Center for Effective Global Action, and a research affiliate with Innovations for Poverty Action.

Muralidharan's primary research interests include development, public, and labor economics. Specific topics of interest include education, health, and social protection; measuring quality of public service delivery; program evaluation; and improving the effectiveness of public spending (with a focus on developing countries).

Born and raised in India, Muralidharan earned an AB in economics (summa cum laude) from Harvard University, an MPhil in economics from Cambridge University, and a PhD in economics from Harvard.

• Development economics
• Human capital
• Education and health in developing countries
• Program evaluation

Andhra Pradesh School Choice Program 

Teacher Performance Pay 

Leveraging Technology to Improve Learning Outcomes

Monitoring Competition Between Government Service Providers

Das, Jishnu, Alaka Holla, and Aakash Mohpal, and Karthik Muralidharan. 2016. "Quality and Accountability in Healthcare Delivery: Audit-Study Evidence from Primary Care Providers in India." American Economic Review 106 (12): 3765–99. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20151138.

de Ree, Joppe, Karthik Muralidharan, Menno Pradhan, and Halsey Rogers. 2018. "Double for Nothing? Experimental Evidence on an Unconditional Teacher Salary Increase in Indonesia." Quarterly Journal of Economics 133 (2): 993–1039. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx040.

Muralidharan, Karthik. 2016. "A New Approach to Public-Sector Hiring in India for Improved Service Delivery." In India Policy Forum 2015-16, edited by Shekar Shah, Subir Gokarn, and Karthik Muralidharan. New Delhi: Sage. 

Muralidharan, Karthik, Jishnu Das, Alaka Holla, and Aakash Mohpal. 2017. "The Fiscal Cost of Weak Governance: Evidence from Primary Education in India. Journal of Public Economics 145:116–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2016.11.005.

Muralidharan, Karthik, Jishnu Das, Alaka Holla, and Aakash Mohpal. 2016. "The Fiscal Cost of Weak Governance: Evidence from Teacher Absence in India." World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 7579.

Muralidharan, Karthik, and Paul Niehaus. 2017. "Experimentation at Scale." Journal of Economic Perspectives 31 (4): 103–24.

Muralidharan, Karthik, Paul Niehaus, and Sandip Sukhtankar. 2016. "Building State Capacity: Evidence from Biometric Smartcards in India." American Economic Review 106 (10): 2895–2929. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20141346.

Muralidharan, Karthik, and Nishith Prakash. 2017. "Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrolment for Girls in India." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 9 (3): 321–50. DOI: 10.1257/app.20160004