Vijayendra Rao
Appointment
Advisory Committee Chair
Advisor
Boundaries Membership & Belonging
Successful Societies
Connect
About
Vijayendra (Biju) Rao integrates his training in economics with theories and methods from anthropology, sociology and political science to study the social, cultural, and political context of extreme poverty in developing countries.
He leads the Social Observatory, an inter-disciplinary effort to improve the conversation between citizens and governments.
His research has spanned a wide variety of subjects including participatory development, collective action, deliberative democracy, the rise in dowries in India, the determinants and consequences of domestic violence, the economics of sex work, public celebrations, and culture and development policy.
He has worked with governments and NGOs to design, implement and evaluate policy interventions that harness the capacity of collective action and participation to reduce poverty, bridge gender and group-based boundaries, and improve the delivery of public services, in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Jamaica and Sri Lanka.
Awards
- Fellow, International Economic Association (2021)
- Life Member, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, India (2009)
Relevant Publications
- Rao, V., Majumdar, S., & Sanyal, P. (2026). Revolution by Stealth: How Women's Groups Catalyzed a Cultural Transformation in Bihar. Cambridge University Press.
- Sanyal, P., & Rao, V. (2019). Oral Democracy: Deliberation in Indian Village Assemblies. Cambridge University Press.
- Mansuri, G., & Rao, V. (2013). Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? World Bank Policy Research Report.
- Rao, V., & Walton, M. (Eds.). (2004). Culture and Public Action. Stanford University Press.
- Ashwin, J., Biradavolu, M., Chhabra, A., et al., & Rao, V. (2026). Qualitative analysis with large-N: A new method with an application to aspirations in Bangladesh. Economic Journal.
- Ashwin, J., Chhabra, A., & Rao, V. (2025). Using large language models for qualitative analysis can introduce serious bias. Sociological Methods and Research.
- Parthasarathy, R., Rao, V., & Palaniswamy, N. (2019). Deliberative democracy in an unequal world: A text-as-data analysis of South India's village assemblies. American Political Science Review, 113(3), 623–640.
- Bloch, F., Desai, S., & Rao, V. (2004). Wedding celebrations as conspicuous consumption: Signaling social status in rural India. Journal of Human Resources, XXXIX(3).
- Bloch, F., & Rao, V. (2002). Terror as a bargaining instrument: A case study of dowry violence in rural India. American Economic Review, 92(4), 1029–1043.
- Rao, V. (1993). The rising price of husbands: A hedonic analysis of dowry increases in rural India. Journal of Political Economy, 101(4).