CV — Pooja Balasubramanian

Professional experience

Independent Researcher & Policy Consultant

Self-employed

2013 – present

Research and advisory work on care, gender, debt/financialisation and value chains for research institutes, civil-society platforms and academic partners.

Senior Researcher

German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Bonn

2020 – 2024

Interdisciplinary research on inequality, poverty, social protection and gender for the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Researcher

University of Goettingen

2016 – 2020

Impact evaluation, Doctoral thesis on Behavioural & Development Economics.

Policy Consultant

Center for Global Development (CGD) / UN Foundation

2016 – 2017

Systematic review and evidence mapping for a major report on women’s economic empowerment.

Researcher

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)

2014 – 2015

Applied social policy research.

Research Associate

Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL South Asia)

2013 – 2014

Applied field research on poverty and development interventions.

Selected publications

Balasubramanian, P. et al. (2024). Does Women’s Economic Empowerment Promote Human Development? ↗ World Development.
Balasubramanian, P. (2024). 80 Years of Bleeding Us Dry! The Bretton Woods Institutions, Austerity and Social Protection ↗. In: Towards a People’s History of the IMF-World Bank. IBON International.
Balasubramanian, P. et al. (2023). Does Economic Growth Reduce Multidimensional Poverty? ↗ World Development.
Balasubramanian, P. (2022). Poverty, Inequality and Growth: The East Asian Experience ↗. In: Interlinkages between the SDGs. London.

For a full list of publications see Publications, and for consultancies see Consultancy.

Core areas of expertise

Care economy, social protection and social reproduction policy
Gender-responsive public policy and women’s economic empowerment (systematic review and meta-analysis)
Debt, financialisation and fiscal space for social policy
Political economy of food and agricultural value chains
Governance and institutional design for inclusive development
Quantitative and distributional analysis, and evidence synthesis for policy