Dr. Vijayendra Rao is a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. He 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. Over the course of his career Dr. Rao has published on subjects that include the rise in dowries in India, the social and economic context of domestic violence, why extremely poor families spend large amounts of money on public celebrations, the economics sex work in Calcutta, and how to integrate economic and social theory to develop more effective public policy. He co-edited Culture and Public Action, and co-authored the 2006 World Development Report on Equity and Development. One stream of his current work examines the determinants of citizen engagement in poor societies, with a goal towards understanding how best to mobilize citizens to improve public services and alleviate poverty. Another line of work studies the inter-relationship between social and economic mobility in India.

Dr. Rao obtained a BA (Economics, Statistics, Sociology) from St. Xavier's College - Bombay (now Mumbai), a PhD (Economics) from the University of Pennsylvania, was a post-doctoral fellow at the Economics Research Center and an Associate of the Committe on Southern Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, and taught at the University of Michigan and Williams College before joining the World Bank's Research Department in 1999. He serves on the editorial boards of EDCC, JDS and JMMR, on the Social Development Board of the World Bank, on the Advisory Committee of the Succesful Societies Program at CIFAR, and is a member of research institutes and NGOs in India, the US, and the UK.