Arjun Prakash
Areas of Interest & Expertise
- Meritocracy and evaluation
- Economics of discrimination
- Belonging and economic inclusion
- Employment and wage disparities
- Development economics
Biography
Arjun Prakash is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He earned his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur after completing his postgraduate studies at the University of Hyderabad. His doctoral research examined labour market disparities in employment and wages in India’s formal labour market. His broader academic interests include inequality, discrimination, and the limits of merit-based explanations of economic outcomes. He is particularly interested in how institutional norms and systems of evaluation influence access, mobility, and belonging within labour markets. As an educator, he seeks to connect economic theory with lived experience and social realities.
Publications
Journal articles
- Prakash, A., & Yadav, I. S. (2025). Breaking barriers or reinforcing stereotypes? A comprehensive analysis of the gender pay gap and glass ceiling in the Indian tech industry. Labour & Industry. https://doi.org/10.1080/10301763.2025.2522012
- Prakash, A. (2025). What’s in a name? Examining the impact of upper-caste surnames on wages and employment in the Indian information technology sector. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-09 – 2024-0409
- Prakash, A., & Yadav, I. S. (2024). Disparity in employment in India: Evidence from engineering graduates across social groups and gender. Review of Social Economy. https://doi.org/10.1080/00346764.2024.2402321
- Prakash, A., Aggarwal, S., Varghese, J. J., & Varghese, J. J. (2025). Writing without borders: AI and cross-cultural convergence in academic writing quality. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025 – 05484‑6
- Prakash, A., & Yadav, I. S. (2025). The gender wage gap in India: A quantile regression analysis of discrimination and sticky floor effects. Journal of Social and Economic Development. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12651-025 – 00407‑z
- Prakash, A., Varghese, J. J., & Aggarwal, S. (2024). Gender of gender studies: Examining regional and gender-based disparities in scholarly publications. Scientometrics, 129(10), 4471 – 4493. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024 – 05084‑2
- Prakash, A., & Yadav, I. S. (2025). Analysing gender pay disparities and structural barriers among software developers: A cross-country study. Journal for Labour Market Research. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12651-025 – 00407‑z
Online articles
- Prakash, A. (2025). The last name on the list: Why belonging begins with empathy. The Print.
https://theprint.in/yourturn/subscriberwrites-the-last-name-on-the-list-why-belonging-begins-with-empathy/2804706/