E. Somanathan

After getting bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics, I got a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 1995 and taught economics at Emory University and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor before joining the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi where I am Associate Professor.

I am interested in the study of economic development as an evolutionary process, and in economy-environment relationships. I use evolutionary game theory to model changes in people's preferences and behavior that occur in response to changes in the economy and the feedback effects of such changes on the economy. For example, Rajiv Sethi and I studied the evolution of social norms of restraint in common property resource use and examined the conditions under which such norms were stable. Paul Rubin and I have studied the co-evolution of honesty or loyalty of workers towards their employers with the accumulation of capital.

I am currently beginning research on a book on India's environment and am interested in modeling the evolution of preferences for different types of consumption goods. These consumption goods are classified along two lines:

1. Resource-intensity

2. Goods for which relative levels of consumption are most pertinent to consumers as opposed to those for which absolute levels of consumption are pertinent.