Kaushik Basu is the President-Elect of the International Economic Association. He is an Economics graduate of St. Stephen's College, a constituent college of the University of Delhi. He is also an MSc holder of Economics from the London School of Economics.

In 1992, he found the Centre for Development Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, and served as its first Executive Director until 1996.In 2009 he became the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India and held that position until 2012.In 2012, Kaushik was appointed as Chief Economist at the World Bank.He currently teaches courses on game theory at the George Washington University.

Kaushik has been decorated with several awards and honours, some of which include The National Mahalanobis Memorial Medal, Doctorate of Humane Letters from Fordham University, Elected Fellow of The World Academy of Science, Trieste, and several others.