Smriti Rao, Ph.D

Department Chair, Economics, Finance and International Business

Professor of Economics

Global Studies Program Director

508-767-7565 Tsotsis Family Academic Center - Room 229

Degrees Earned

B.A., Birla Institute of Technology
M.A., Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2005

Undergraduate Courses Taught

Comparative Economic Systems: China, India and the US
International Trade
International Finance
Principles of Microeconomic Theory
Principles of Macroeconomic Theory

Publications & Editorships

with Smita Ramnarain. 2022. Gender, Social Protection and Crises of Social Reproduction: Contextualizing NREGA. Review of Radical Political Economics, special issue on Gender and Radical Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1177/04866134221123817

2021. Labor and Social Reproduction in The Edward Elgar Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies, edited by Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Kristina Dietz, Bettina Engels, Ben McKay. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. pp 99-108.

2021. How (not) to count Indian women's work: Gendered Analyses and the Periodic Labor Force Survey. Review of Agrarian Studies 11(2). http://ras.org.in/0969eaac92d27456151a71157d8152ea

2021. Beyond the Coronavirus: Understanding Crises of Social Reproduction. Global Labour Journal 12(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v12i1.4307

with Sarah Gammage, Julia Arnold and Elizabeth Armstrong. 2020. Human Mobility, COVID-19 Human Mobility, Covid-19 and Policy Responses: The Rights and Claims-Making of Migrant Domestic Workers. Feminist Economics Special Issue on Gender and COVID-19.

with Haroon Akram-Lodhi. 2020. Feminist Political Economy. The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Economics edited by Günseli Berik and Ebru Kongar.

with Smita Ramnarain. 2020. Understanding Women’s Participation in NREGA. In Women’s Work in Rural India, edited by Shruti Nagbhushan, Madhura Swaminathan and V K Ramchandran. New Delhi: Tullika Publishers.

Labor and Social Reproduction. Forthcoming. The Edward Elgar Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies, edited by Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Kristina Dietz, Bettina Engels, Ben McKay.

with Vamsi Vakulabharanam. 2019. Migration, Crises and Social Transformation in India after the 1990s. in Handbook of Migration Crises, Eds. Cecilia Menjivar, Marie Ruiz, Immanuel Ness. Oxford University Press.

Gender and Class Relations in Rural India. 2018. Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(5-6), pp 950- 968.

2018. Gender and Financial Inclusion through the Post in Naoyuki Yoshino, José Ansón, and Matthias Helble, eds. Postal Savings: Reaching Everyone in Asia. Asian Development Bank Institute. 226-267.

Rao, Smriti. 2017. “Women in the Urban Indian Economy: What Can the Data on Migration Tell Us?” in Kongar, E. and R Connelly, eds. Gender and Time Use in a Global Context. Palgrave Macmillan.

Rao, Smriti. 2017. Book Review of Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics As If All Poeople Mattered, second edition. Lourdes Beneria, Gunseli Berik and Maria Floro, eds. Review of Radical Political Economy, July 2017.

Rao, Smriti. 2016. Indicators of gendered control over agricultural resources: A guide for agricultural policy and research. Working Paper No. 1. CGIAR Gender and Agriculture Research Network, CGIAR Consortium Office and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). Cali, Colombia. Revise and Resubmit at Agriculture and Human Development.

Rao Smriti and Kade Finnoff. 2015. “Marriage Migration and Inequality in India 1983-2008”. Population and Development Review, 41(3), pp 485-505.

Rao, Smriti. 2015. “Gender and Financial Inclusion through the Post”. UN Women and Universal Postal Union (UPU) Discussion Paper, April 2015.

Rao, Smriti and Hazel Jean Malapit. 2014. “Gender, Household Structure and Financial Participation in the United States”. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 35(3), pp 1-15.

Rao Smriti and Christina Presenti. 2012 “An Empirical Analysis of the Determinants of Human Trafficking”. Feminist Economics, 18 (2), pp 231-263.

Rao Smriti. 2011. “Work and Empowerment: Women in Agriculture in South India”. Journal of Development Studies, 47(2), pp 294-215

2008. “Reforms with a Female Face: Gender, Liberalization and Economic Policy in Andhra Pradesh”. World Development, 36 (7), pp. 1213-32

2005. “Women’s Self Help Groups and Credit for the Poor: A Case Study from Andhra Pradesh” in V.K. Ramchandran and M Swaminathan eds. Financial Liberalization, Rural Banking and Credit Markets in India. New Delhi: Tullika Publishers, 2005.

Professional Affiliations

Associate Editor, Feminist Economics

Book Series editor, International Association for Feminist Economics

Research Leader, Asian Political Economy Program, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.