Gayithri Karnam is a Professor of Economics in the Center for Economic Studies and Policy at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. She specialises in Public Economics, Industrial Economics and Public policy studies. She has conducted extensive research in the area of state fiscal studies, public expenditure planning and management, Budget reforms. She has served as an advisor on a number of state government committees and as consultant to international donor agencies like USAID and DFID in state level fiscal studies. She has been a recipient of Shastri Indo Canadian faculty research fellowship twice to undertake comparative fiscal studies at the Carleton University, Canada.