Sendhil Mullainathan is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Founding Member of the Poverty Action Lab, and a Board Member of the Bureau of Research in the Economic Analysis of Development. He was hired with tenure by Harvard in 2004 after having spent six years at MIT, first as a junior faculty member and then as a full Professor. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation 'genius grant.' Mullainathan received his B.A. in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Economics from Cornell University in 1993 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard in 1998.

Professor Mullainathan conducts research on development economics, behavioral economics, and corporate finance. His recent work includes an article published in the American Economic Review, in which he and co-author Marianne Bertrand test for the existence of race-based hiring in the Boston and Chicago labor markets by sending out identical résumés to employers, half with traditionally African American names and the other half with traditionally Caucasian names. They observe a 50 percent difference in call-back rates between the two samples. Another recent paper suggests that tiny psychological effects can have potentially enormous impacts on demand - more of an impact than price - based on a randomized experiment involving letters offering short-term loans sent by a bank in South Africa.

Professor Mullainathan has published extensively in top economics journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Political Economy. In addition to being a MacArthur Fellow, Mullainathan is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including those from the National Science Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in March 2009.