Deepak Lal is James S. Coleman Professor Emeritus of International Development Studies, University of California at Los Angeles, and Professor Emeritus of Political Economy, University College London. Born in 1940, and educated at the Doon School, Dehra Dun, St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and Jesus College, Oxford, he has been a member of the Indian Foreign Service (1963-66), Lecturer, Jesus College, Oxford, and Christ Church, Oxford (1966-68), Research Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford (1968-70), Lecturer and Reader in Political Economy, University College, London (1970-84) and Professor of Political Economy, University of London (1984-93).

He was a full-time consultant to the Indian Planning Commission (1973-74), a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, 1978, and has served as a consultant to the ILO, UNCTAD, OECD, UNIDO, the World Bank, and the ministries of planning in Korea and Sri Lanka. During 1983-84 he was an Economic Advisor to the World Bank, and then the Research Administrator at the World Bank (1984-87),on leave from University College, London.

He has been co-director of the Trade Policy Unit at the Center for Policy Studies (1994-97) and the Chairman of the board of advisors for the Nestle Lecture on the developing world (1994-98). He has been a member of the UK Shadow Chancellor’s Council of Economic Advisors from 2000-09, and a distinguished visiting fellow at the National Council for Economic Research, New Delhi since 1999.

He received the Italian Societa Libera's International Freedom Prize for Economics in 2007.He has received honorary doctorates from the University Paul Cezanne, Aix- Marseille III, France (2002) and UPC in Peru (2010). From September 2008- October 2010 he was the President of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Professor Lal is the author of numerous articles and books on economic development and public policy including: Methods of Project Analysis (1974); Men and Machines (1978); Prices for Planning (1980); The Poverty of Development Economics (1983, 1997, 2002); (with P. Collier) Labour and Poverty in Kenya (1986); The Hindu Equilibrium (2 vols, 1988, 1989; revised abridged edtn. 2005); (with H.Myint) The Political Economy of Poverty, Equity and Growth (1996) nominated as ‘an outstanding academic book’ by Choice in 1997; the Ohlin lectures: Unintended Consequences (1998), and In Praise of Empires (2004).

His most recent book is Reviving the Invisible Hand: the case for classical liberalism in the twenty first century (2006) nominated as ‘an outstanding academic book by Choice in 2006. Three collections of his essays have been published: The Repressed Economy (1993), Against Dirigisme (1994) and Unfinished Business (1999).Many of his books have been translated into Chinese, Russian, Dutch and Portuguese.

Favourite books:

1. A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

2. The Constitution of Liberty by F. A. Hayek

3. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edmund Gibbon