Jessica Seddon Wallack

Urban Infrastructure and Governance,Research Network

Indian political economy, information and governance, sustainability studies

Director, CDF

Indian political economy, egovernance design, infrastructure policy, development data

Dr. Jessica Wallack leads the Centre for Development Finance and is a Professor at the Institute for Financial and Management Research in Chennai. Her research focuses on the ways in individuals'’ knowledge and beliefs interact with institutional pressures to create development politics and economics. One cluster of projects focuses on the institutional political economy of India, and in particular the role of IT in shaping the forms of citizen oversight and checks and balances that are possible. A second cluster of projects focuses on the epistemology of development seeks to identify ways to improve the production and management development data to support more nuanced and understanding of the development context and its dynamics. A third cluster of projects focuses on the interaction of scientific knowledge with policy and market incentives in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Wallack is also involved in design and evaluation of various e-governance technologies for local governments in India as well as research on the role of IT and IT-enabled transparency and citizen oversight in improving local governance. She has published a wide variety of articles and book chapters in international academic and policy journals and her work has been supported by grants from Google.org, Australian Development Research Awards, ICICI Foundation, Stanford University, and University of California San Diego, among others. Wallack serves as a member of the Advisory Board the Wilderhill Global Clean Energy Index (NEX). She is also Research Scholar, Global Information Industry Center, San Diego, California and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to coming to IFMR, Wallack was Assistant Professor, Political Economy, at University of California, San Diego. She has also worked at the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank. Dr. Wallack earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and her B.A. from Harvard University.

Stanford Graduate School of Business

Ph.D.

Political Economics

2004

UC San Diego

Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies

Assistant Professor

6/2004

3/2007

chennai

440 Anna Salai

chennai

Tamil Nadu

600018

India

jessica.wallack@ifmr.ac.in