Dr. Ehtisham Ahmad

Since 2010, Professor Ahmad has been affiliated with the LSE, initially at the Asia Research Center (to 2018) and subsequently the Grantham Research Institute; the University of Bonn (to 2019), Zhejiang and Sun Yat-Sen Universities and the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Science (to 2020). At the IMF during 1990-2010, Ahmad has been Senior Advisor; Advisor and Division Chief, Fiscal Affairs Department, and Special Advisor to the Saudi Finance Minister during 1996-1998 (on leave from the IMF). He was on the World Bank staff team for the 1990 World Development Report on “Poverty”. Previously, he had been Director of the Development Economics Research Program, STICERD, LSE (1986-1990), and Deputy Director of the Development Economics Research Center at Warwick University (1980-1986). During the 1980s, together with Lord Stern, he directed a research program on Indian Tax Reforms (at Warwick and then LSE), and during 1981/82 was a Visiting Fellow at NIPFP and the Indian Statistical Institute (Delhi and Bangalore).

Over the past three years, Ahmad has been directing a program at the LSE on Sustainable Urban Transitions in China and Mexico. He has written widely on public policy and fiscal reforms, multilevel governance and fiscal federalism, poverty reduction and sustainable development. Recent books include Beneficial Property Taxation for Emerging Market Countries—financing sustainable development and post Pandemic recovery (with Giorgio Brosio), Palgrave Macmillan, 2022; Fiscal Underpinnings for Sustainable Development in China, Springer 2018 (with M. Niu and K. Xiao); Multi-level Finance and the Crisis in Europe, Elgar 2016 (with Giorgio Brosio and Massimo Bordignon); Handbook of Multilevel
Finance, Elgar 2015, (with Giorgio Brosio), Fiscal Reforms in the Middle East—On a VAT for the GCC. (ed., with A Al-Faris), Edward Elgar, 2010; Handbook of Fiscal Federalism, Elgar 2006 (with Giorgio Brosio), and Does Decentralization Enhance Service Delivery and Poverty Reduction? Edward Elgar 2009 (with Giorgio Brosio). Some earlier books include
Theory and Practice of Tax Reform in Developing Countries; Cambridge University Press 1991 (with Nicholas Stern); Social Security in Developing Countries, Oxford University Press 1992 (with Jean Drèze, John Hills and Amartya Sen).