I am the John H. Laporte, Jr. Class of 1967 Professor of Economics, Public Policy and Finance at Princeton University. I started my academic career in 2001 after completing my bachelors degree in Mathematics with Computer Science and Ph.D. in Economics from MIT. Prior to joining Princeton in 2012, I taught at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago Booth School of business.

My research focuses on finance and macroeconomics, but the broader thrust is on understanding how we all connect with each other to form this thing we call the economy. I see the goal of economics as helping society connect with itself in ways such that the sum is bigger than its parts. 

I co-founded the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) in 2007, a non-profit research institute dedicated to economic research, teaching and innovation. I am also the director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. 

If you are interested in my work, you can read my earlier book, House of Debt with Amir Sufi, or watch a summary of the academic work behind it at the 2018 Nobel symposium. I also discuss the basic insight of our book in an interview with Thomas Friedman, and its policy implications are summarized in this New York Times article.

My current work focuses on the deeper implications of rising inequality for the macroeconomy - including growth, financial markets, monetary policy and fiscal policy. I lay out some of this agenda in this IMF magazine interview. You can read my working papers and published work here.