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Subir Chakrabarti

Professor of Economics

Economic theory is tough to comprehend. A professor of economics at IUPUI since 1986, Subir Chakrabarti has had plenty of practice helping others try to figure it out-both in the classroom and through his written work.

He says of his undergraduate course, Principles of Economics 201, "I find it most difficult to teach students how production and cost are related." His primary area of focus, game theory, is even more difficult to comprehend. In simple terms, a big issue of game theory today is "how people will make decisions when they don't have all the information."

Chakrabarti approaches this tough question and others in the recently released second edition of his book Games and Decision Making (Oxford University Press).

Even with the existence of numerous publications on game theory, Chakrabarti felt that the majority of books were either too informal for those in the field, or too advanced in their approach for all but the most seasoned researchers to understand. This is why he and the late Dr. Charalambos Aliprantis combined their years of research and knowledge to write the first edition of Games and Decision Making (Oxford University Press, 1999).

Regarding his book, Chakrabarti notes, "it's useful in order to understand what can happen in situations of conflict, in situations of bargaining, and it has lots of applications in economics, political science, sociology, and many other disciplines."

As Chakrabarti introduced game and decision theory to more and more students, he decided that Games and Decision Making needed to be expanded and the two co-authors embarked on a new, more comprehensive edition in 2008. Sadly, Aliprantis passed away in 2009, and Chakrabarti completed the project on his own.

Research and teaching are connected. Chakrabarti explains how enriching the teaching experience is for his own continued learning. "The feedback process is very important. Teaching students at the advanced level is very rewarding because you learn a lot from the questions they ask and the way they see the subject. You learn a lot from that exchange."

"This is the part of teaching that is the best," he says, "It's not the grading, not preparing the slides. It's the realization that students are growing intellectually and are starting to both understand and appreciate the concepts and ideas being taught. To pass on this knowledge to a younger generation is exciting indeed."

--Don Kite
Liberal Arts News Bureau

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