Rikhil R. Bhavnani
Position title: Associate Professor: Comparative Politics | Political Methodology
Email: bhavnani@wisc.edu
Phone: (608) 262-5638
Address:
312 North Hall

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Education:
Ph.D. in Political Science, Stanford University, 2010
M.A. in Economics, Stanford University, 2008
MSc. Development Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2003
B.A. Economics and Political Science, Yale University, 2000
Biography:
Rikhil R. Bhavnani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and a faculty affiliate at the La Follette School of Public Affairs, the Elections Research Center and the Center for South Asia.
Professor Bhavnani’s research and teaching focus on inequalities in political representation, the political economy of migration, and the political economy of development. His research is particularly concerned with causal identification, and is focused on South Asia. Bhavnani is the co-author, with Bethany Lacina, of a book on the nativist or “sons-of-the-soil” reaction to within-country migration across the developing world, forthcoming at Cambridge University Press. His papers have been published or are forthcoming in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, World Politics, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the British Journal of Political Science and the Economic Journal, among others.
Prior to starting at UW–Madison, Professor Bhavnani was a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. He has worked at the Center for Global Development and the International Monetary Fund, and received a PhD in political science and an MA in economics from Stanford University, and a BA in political science and economics from Yale University.
Courses:
PS 948 Seminar: Topics in Comparative Politics Fall 2018-2019
PS 817 Empirical Methods of Political Inquiry Fall 2018-2019
PS 948 Political Inequality Spring 2017-2018
PS 330 Political Economy of Development Fall 2017-2018
PS 327 Indian Politics in Comparative Perspective Fall 2017-2018
PS 948 Political Economy of Development Spring 2016-2017
PS 601 Indian Politics in Comparative Perspective Spring 2016-2017
PS 948 Political Inequality: Measures, Causes, Effects and Remedies Spring 2015-2016
PS 601 Indian Politics in Comparative Perspective Spring 2015-2016
PS 401 The Political Economy of Development Fall 2015-2016
PS 401 Political Inequality: Measures, Causes, Effects and Remedies Fall 2015-2016
Awards:
2012-2013
Royal Economic Society Prize for the best unsolicited paper published in The Economic Journal in 2012, for “Counting Chickens When They Hatch: Timing and the Effects of Aid on Growth.”