Shyamal Chowdhury

Professor Shyamal Chowdhury is a Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Sydney's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, a position he has held since January 2022. He advanced through the ranks at the university, serving as Associate Professor from 2016 to 2021, Senior Lecturer from 2014 to 2015 in the School of Economics, and earlier as Senior Lecturer and Lecturer in Agricultural Economics in the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment from 2007 to 2013. Chowdhury earned his BSc (Hons.) in Economics from Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh (1989–1994), MA in Economics from Kiel University, Germany (1998–1999), and PhD in Agricultural Economics from Bonn University, Germany (1999–2003). Prior to joining Sydney, he worked as a Post-doctoral Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (2003–2006) and as a Consultant at the World Bank in Washington, DC (2006–2007).

Chowdhury's research focuses on economic development and agricultural economics, particularly the functioning of rural labor and credit markets, technology adoption, formation of non-cognitive skills in children, seasonal migration, microfinance, and social networks in developing countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Uganda, and Kenya. His influential publications have appeared in top-tier journals such as Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, European Economic Review, and American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Select works include “Underinvestment in a Profitable Technology: The Case of Seasonal Migration in Bangladesh” with G. Bryan and A.M. Mobarak (Econometrica, 2014); “Economic Preferences Across Generations and Family Clusters: A Large-Scale Experiment in a Developing Country” with M. Sutter and K.F. Zimmermann (Journal of Political Economy, 2022); “Encouragement and Distortionary Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers” with G. Bryan, A.M. Mobarak, M. Morten, and J. Smits (Journal of Public Economics, 2023); “Natural Shocks and Marriage Markets: Fluctuations in Mehr and Dowry in Muslim Marriages” with D. Mallick and P. Roy Chowdhury (European Economic Review, 2020); and “Resilience of Social Transfer Programs to Large Unexpected Shocks” with N. Bin Khaled, D. Mallick, K. Raghunathan, and S. Rashid (Journal of Development Studies, forthcoming). Chowdhury received the University of Sydney Research Accelerator Prize (SOAR Fellowship, AUD 100,000, 2020–2021) and was Co-Editor of The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (2020–2023). He is also a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics since 2012.

Professional Email: shyamal.chowdhury@sydney.edu.au