Kishan Narayan is a PhD student in Public Policy at Northeastern University in Boston. His research lies at the intersection of development, behavioral, and labor economics, with a particular focus on education, inequality, and institutional design in low- and middle-income countries. His recent work examines how high-stakes examinations, educational institutions, and centralized allocation mechanisms shape access to opportunity and socioeconomic mobility.

Before beginning his PhD, Kishan worked at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy- Ministry of Finance (GoI), and the Development Data Lab on projects related to public finance, political representation, and large-scale administrative data. He holds a master’s degree in Computational Social Science from Northeastern University, Applied Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Banaras Hindu University. He is also a member of Bahujan Economists, a platform dedicated to supporting researchers, students, and aspirants from historically marginalized caste, tribal, & religious communities in the field of Economics.