Vegard Iversen has a PhD in development economics from University of Cambridge and is a Professor in Development Economics and the Head of the Livelihoods and Institutions Department at NRI. He a Senior Research Fellow at the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) and was a non-resident Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER, Helsinki from 2019 to 2023.

Vegard joined NRI in September 2018 after 12 years of living and working in India. After starting his development career at the Agricultural University of Norway in 1992, he was a Junior Programme Officer in UNDP’s Delhi office from 1993 to 1995. Having completed his PhD in 2000, he spent six years as tenured Faculty at the School of Development Studies (now Global Development) at University of East Anglia.

He joined the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) New Delhi office as a Research Fellow in 2006, followed by four years as a visiting Faculty at Indian Statistical Institute (Delhi). He has been a Professor and Vice Dean at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy (2012-13), an Adjunct Professor at Sanford School of Public Policy’s Duke Semester in India programme (2015-17) and a Professor in the Economics Area, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA). He was closely involved in the drafting of the programmes and the shaping of the identities of two of India’s first Public Policy Schools - at O. P. Jindal Global University and IIMA.

During his India years, he also took on a variety of assignments, including e.g. the India case study for the 2012 World Development Report, which had gender equality as its theme (the World Bank). He provided expert methodological feedback (through KPMG) on the Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s reviews of FCDO programmes across the developing world. He acted in a similar capacity for the Steering Committee overseeing the attempted retrospective evaluation of FCDO’s GBP 250 million investments in the rural livelihoods portfolio in India. He has taken on a variety of evaluation, replication and quality assurance assignments for 3ie.

Vegard has extensive field, survey and other data collection experience. His applied research spans the use of modern impact evaluation techniques, mixed methods, behavioural experiments, archival work and the occasional sociological or anthropological detour. Ongoing research covers a variety of themes, including social mobility in developing countries with a landmark edited volume published by Oxford University Press in 2021; together with co-authors he uses unique and in-depth survey and behavioural experimental data to study politicians and local democracy in low-income contexts, including who gets elected for office, how to measure politician quality and whether time in office changes men and women politicians differently. Other ongoing research focuses on changes in gender norms and on the impacts of different implementation models for efforts to enhance the productivity of and increase women’s involvement in a dynamic rural sector in northwest Bangladesh.

From 2012 to 2019 Vegard was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of South Asian Development. He received the 2009 Dudley Seers Memorial Prize for the best article in Journal of Development Studies (jointly with Richard Palmer-Jones): his recent American Journal of Political Science article titled ‘Time in Office and the Changing Gender Gap in Dishonesty’ won a co-author the FulbrightNorway best scientific article award for 2023. He has served on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Development Studies since 2016.

• Social mobility
• Gender, caste and other inequality
• Gender norms and norms misperceptions
• Politicians, corruption and governance
• Democratic institutions
• Political violence
• Citizen monitoring and public service delivery
• Farming, livelihoods and rural development
• Food security
• Scaling of innovations
• Migration and social networks
• Impact and other evaluation

• 2023-2025: ‘Causal pathways from violent conflict to violence against children: evidence from multi-country secondary data’. Research Grant. Collaboration with Humboldt University of Berlin and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Funded by the Secondary Data Analysis Initiative (SDAI), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK. Co-Investigator. GBP 300k.
• 2019-2025: ‘Evaluation of ‘Aquaculture: increasing income, diversifying diets, and empowering women in Bangladesh’. Research Grant. Collaboration with 3ie. Funded by the Gates Foundation. Principal Investigator. GBP 1.8 million.
• 2022-23: Review of the 40 million Euros CGIAR programme ‘Putting Research into Use for Nutrition, Sustainable Agriculture and Resilience’ (PRUNSAR). Lead scientist. Agrinatura collaboration. Funded by IFAD and the EC. GBP 370k.
• 2021-22: Independent Science for Development Council (CGIAR): Coordinating reviewer and reviewer of three large research proposals (with a total investment of US$ 90 million) under the One CGIAR umbrella.
• 2021: Mid Term Review of the Fund for Responsible Business (FVO) and the Fund against Child Labour (FBK). Team member. Funded by the Dutch RVO.
• 2018-21: ‘The impacts of large dams on agriculture, poverty and vulnerability’. Research Grant. Principal Investigator. Funded by FutureDAMS, University of Manchester.
• 2017-18: ‘The impact of time in office on women (and other) politicians’. Collaboration with scholars at University of Oslo, University of Auckland and Monash University. Research Grant. Funded by University of Auckland and Monash University.
• 2014-16: Evaluation lead (through Oxford Policy Management/EDOREN) of Dfid’s comprehensive support (the DEEPEN programme) to innovative regulation to improve learning in low-cost, private schools in Lagos, Nigeria; 2014-16. Our baseline study covered 360 private schools with numeracy and literacy tests administered to 2,450 3^rd standard children. 
• 2013-15: External expert reviewer on methodology for the UK’s Independent Commission of Aid Impact (ICAI). The ICAI was set up to review the UK aid and Dfid project and programme portfolio (worth £10. 5 billion a year) throughout the developing world. (see http://icai.independent.gov.uk/). 

Provided feedback on the following ICAI reviews:            

• • Multilaterals
  • The UK’s International Climate Fund
  • Dfid’s Approach to Anti-Corruption and Its Impact on the Poor
  • Dfid’s Contribution to the Reduction of Child Mortality in Kenya
  • Dfid’s Approach to Delivering Impact
  • Scaling up in fragile states
  • Business in Development
  • How Dfid learns                                     

• 2012-13: External expert responsible for quality assurance for the Steering Committee overlooking the attempted retrospective evaluation of 20 years and £250 million investments in Dfid’s rural livelihoods portfolio in India.
• 2012: Developing a TOR for planned impact evaluations of drinking water, sanitation and solid waste management interventions in urban Vietnam. Consultancy. Funded by NORAD.                                                                                                                                        
• 2012: Development of a methodology for estimating employment effects of IFC grants support to a cement company in Orissa and a large food processing firm in Bangladesh. Consultancy. Funded by International Finance Corporation (IFC) (World Bank Group):
• 2012: ‘Replicaton of Jensen and Oster’s research on cable TV and women’s status in rural India’. Research Grant (with Richard Palmer-Jones, University of East Anglia). Funded by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie).
• 2011-2012: ‘Does Female Leadership Impact on the Quality of Public Goods? Evidence from a Public Poverty Alleviation Programme in Andhra Pradesh, India’. Research Grant (with Farzana Afridi, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi). Funded by the International Growth Centre (IGC). Co-Investigator. Survey covering 300 elected village council heads and 1,500 MNREGA beneficiary households: extraction from and translation (from Telugu) of the findings of more than 700 official social audit reports.
• Jan-April 2011: Commissioned to write the background paper on ‘Gender and Development in India’ for the 2012 World Development Report (with Nitya Rao, University of East Anglia). Lead consultant. Funded by the World Bank, Washington DC.
• 2008-2009: ‘Social networks, labour transactions and outcomes: A theoretical and empirical study of migrant workers and their employers in South-Asia’. Research Grant (with Magnus Hatlebakk and Gaute Torsvik, Chr Michelsen Institute, Bergen and Amrita Dhillon, King’s College, London). Co-Investigator. Norwegian Research Council. Total value: GBP 150k.
• 2008-2010: ‘The intra-household allocation of resources: cross-cultural tests, methodological innovations and policy implications’. Collaboration between economists and anthropologists using behavioual experiments with married couples to test economic theories of household behaviour in Nigeria, Ethiopia and India (with Cecile Jackson, Bereket Kebede, Nitya Rao and Arjan Verschoor, University of East Anglia and Alistair Munro, GRIPS, Tokyo). Research Grant. Co-Investigator. Funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK-Dfid joint scheme. Total value: GBP 500k. Left project late 2008. 
• 2008-2009: Institutional and network-driven barriers to labour market entry: a small, exploratory study of low and unskilled labour markets for youths in (and around) Delhi. Research Grant. Principal Investigator.  Funded by The World Bank, New Delhi. In-depth interviews of household and manufacturing employers, workers and recruitment agencies.

Research Prizes

• Our paper ‘Time in Office and the Changing Gender Gap in Dishonesty: Evidence from Local Politics in India’, published in American Journal of Political Science, was awarded (to co-author Jensenius) Fulbright Norway’s best scientific article prize for 2023.
• Awarded the annual Dudley Seers Memorial Prize (2009) for the best paper published in Journal of Development Studies in 2008.

Editorial Roles

• Editorial Board member, Journal of Development Studies, 2016-ongoing
• Editorial Board member, Journal of Development Effectiveness, 2021-ongoing
• Editorial Board member, Journal of South Asian Development, 2022-ongoing
• Co-Editor, Journal of South Asian Development, 2019-2022
• Editor in-Chief, Journal of South Asian Development, 2012-2019

Honorary Appointments

• Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow (Honorary), UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, 2019-2023.
• Senior Research Fellow (Honorary), International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), 2020-ongoing.

BOOKS 

• Iversen, Vegard, Anirudh Krishna and Kunal Sen (eds, 2021): Social Mobility in Developing Countries: Concepts, Methods and Determinants. Oxford University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192896858.001.0001

JOURNAL ARTICLES

• Iversen, Vegard, Bidisha Barooah, Rishabh Bhattacharya, Vegard Iversen, Rohan Shah, Tejita Tiwari and Amanda Wendt (in progress): ‘Room for Manoeuvre or Window for Rapid, Transformative Change? Gender Norms and Norms Misperceptions in Rural Bangladesh.’
• Vigneri, Marcella, Olusegun Fadare, Karen Devries, Vegard Iversen and Tilman Brück (2026): Past political violence and interpersonal violence against children and youth in Africa, Nature Communications, 17 (3044), 1-12,  https://doi.org/10.1038/s-41467-026-71075-x
• Iversen, Vegard, Anustup Kundu, Rahul Lahoti and Kunal Sen (2026): Barriers or Catalysts? Traditional Institutions and Social Mobility in Rural India, World Development., 200, 107302, 1-37.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107302
• Chaudhuri, Ananish, Vegard Iversen, Francesca R. Jensenius and Pushkar Maitra (2025): Selecting the ‘Best’? Competing Dimensions of Politician Quality in the Developing World, British Journal of Political Science, e81, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123425000225
• Chaudhuri, Ananish, Vegard Iversen, Francesca R. Jensenius and Pushkar Maitra (2024): Time in Office and the Changing Gender Gap in Dishonesty: Evidence from Local Politics in India, American Journal of Political Science, 68(1): 106-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12733                                                                                                           Awarded the FulbrightNorway Prize for the best scientific article of the year.
• Banerjee, Prasenjit, Vegard Iversen, Sandip Mitra and Kunal Sen (2024): Politicians, Institutional Incentives and Citizen Welfare: Evidence from a Lab-in-the Field Experiment in India, Oxford Economic Papers 77(2): 333–352. https://doi.org/10.1093/oep/gpae028
• Dhillon, Amrita, Vegard Iversen and Gaute Torsvik (2021): ‘Employee referral, social proximity and worker discipline: theory and suggestive evidence from India’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 69(3): 1003-1030.
• Iversen, Vegard, Anirudh Krishna and Kunal Sen (2019): ‘Beyond Poverty Escapes: Social Mobility in Developing Countries: A Review Article’, World Bank Research Observer, 34(2): 239-73. https://doi.org/10.1093/wbro/lkz003
• Iversen, Vegard and Richard Palmer-Jones (2019): ‘All you need is Cable TV?’, Journal of Development Studies, 55(5): 946-66. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2018.1506581
• Iversen, Vegard, Anirudh Krishna and Kunal Sen (2017): ‘Rags to Riches’? Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 52(44): 107-114.
• Afridi, Farzana, Vegard Iversen and M. R. Sharan (2017): ‘Women political leaders, corruption and learning: Evidence from a large public program in India’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 66(1): 1-30.
• Puri, Jyotsna, Anastasia Aladysheva, Vegard Iversen, Yashodhan Ghorpade and Tilman Brück (2017): ‘Can rigorous impact evaluations improve humanitarian assistance?’, Journal of Development Effectiveness, 9(4): 519-42. https://doi.org/10.1080/19439342.2017.1388267
• Iversen, Vegard, Adriaan Kalwij, Arjan Verschoor and Amaresh Dubey (2014): ‘Caste dominance and economic performance in rural India’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 62(3): 423-57.
• Afridi, Farzana and Vegard Iversen (2014): ‘Social audits and MGNREGA delivery: Lessons from Andhra Pradesh’, India Policy Forum 2013-14, Vol 10: 297-331.
• Iversen, Vegard, Richard Palmer-Jones and Kunal Sen (2013): ‘On the Colonial Origins of Agricultural Development in India: A Re-examination of Banerjee and Iyer, ‘History, Institutions and Economic Performance’’, Journal of Development Studies, 49(12): 1631-46. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2013.807502
• Iversen, Vegard, Cecile Jackson, Bereket Kebede, Alistair Munro and Arjan Verschoor (2011): ‘Do spouses realise cooperative gains? Experimental evidence from rural Uganda’, World Development, 39(4): 569-78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2010.09.011
• Iversen, Vegard and Yashodhan Ghorpade (2011): ‘Misfortune, misfits and what the city gave and took: the stories of South-Indian child labour migrants 1935-2005’, Modern Asian Studies, 45(5): 1177-1226. https://doi:10.1017/S0026749X10000065
• Iversen, Vegard and Gaute Torsvik (2010): ‘Networks, middlemen and other (urban) labour market mysteries’, Indian Growth and Development Review, 3(1): 62-80. https://doi.org/10.1108/17538251011035882
• Iversen, Vegard, Kunal Sen, Arjan Verschoor and Amaresh Dubey (2009): ‘Job Recruitment Networks and Migration to Cities in India’, Journal of Development Studies, 45(4): 522-43. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220380902725688
• Iversen, Vegard and Richard Palmer-Jones (2008): ‘Literacy sharing, assortative mating or what? Labour market advantages and proximate illiteracy revisited’, Journal of Development Studies, 44(6): 797-838. Awarded the Dudley Seers Memorial Prize for the best article published by Journal of Development Studies in 2008. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220380802058156
• Iversen, Vegard and P. S. Raghavendra (2006): ‘What the signboard hides: Food, caste and employability in small South-Indian eating places’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 40 (3): 311-41. https://doi.org/10.1177/006996670604000302
• Iversen, Vegard, Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, Godfrey Bahiigwa, Frank Ellis and Robert James (2006): ‘Private tax collection - remnant of the past or a way forward? Evidence from Rural Uganda’, Public Administration and Development, 26: 317-28. https://doi.org/10.1002/pad.412
• Iversen, Vegard, Birkha Chettry, Paul Francis, Madhu Gurung, Ghanendra Kafle, Adam Pain and Janet Seeley (2006): ‘High value forests, hidden economies and elite capture: Evidence from forest user groups in Nepal’s Terai’, Ecological Economics,58(1): 93-107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2005.05.021
• Chettry, Birkha, Paul Francis, Madhu Gurung, Vegard Iversen, Ghanendra Kafle, Adam Pain and Janet Seeley (2005): ‘A Framework for the Analysis of Community Forest Performance in the Terai’, Journal of Forest and Livelihood, 4 (2): 1-16.
• Iversen, Vegard (2003): ‘Intrahousehold inequality – A challenge for the capability approach?’, Feminist Economics, 9 (2-3): 93-115 (Special issue on the Work and Ideas of Amartya Sen). https://doi.org/10.1080/1354570032000080868
• Iversen, Vegard (2002): ‘Autonomy in Child Labor Migrants’, World Development, 30 (5): 817-34. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(02)00007-4
• Wiig, Henrik, Jens B. Aune, Solveig Glomsrød and Vegard Iversen (2001): ‘Structural Adjustment and Soil Degradation in Tanzania - A CGE-model approach with Endogenous Soil Productivity’, Agricultural Economics, 24: 263-87. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-5150(00)00068-2
• Brekke, Kjell Arne, Vegard Iversen and Jens B. Aune (1999): ‘Tanzania's soil wealth’, Environment and Development Economics,4: 333 -56.  https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355770X99000224