Asim Khwaja

عاصم إعجاز خواجة

Asim Ijaz Khwaja is a British-born Pakistani-American economist who serves as the Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development at Harvard Kennedy School and as director of Harvard's Center for International Development. Born in London to physician parents of Kashmiri descent, raised in Nigeria and Pakistan and educated at MIT and Harvard, he joined Harvard's faculty in 2001, co-founded the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan, and in 2018 resigned from Pakistan's Economic Advisory Council in protest at the removal of Atif Mian.

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At a glance

Roles
economist
Region
South Asia · Americas & Oceania
Identifiers
Wikidata
Review

Place in the story

    Unknown (unknown)

    Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.

    Summary

    Asim Ijaz Khwaja is a British-born Pakistani-American economist who serves as the Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development at Harvard Kennedy School, and as director of the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University. His research covers development economics, corporate finance, education, political economy, institutions, mechanism design and contract theory, and industrial organisation. 1 2

    The sources give no birth date for him: neither the English nor the Urdu article states one, his Wikidata item records only his London birthplace, and the English article files him under "Year of birth missing (living people)". This record therefore carries no born block rather than an unattested year. 1 2

    Early life and education

    Khwaja was born in London, United Kingdom, to Ijaz Ahmed Khawaja, an ophthalmologist, and Zahida Khawaja, a gynaecologist, both of Kashmiri descent. At the age of two he moved with his parents to Kano, Nigeria, where he lived for eight years; the family then moved to Pakistan, where he attended Aitchison College. He obtained a bachelor's degree in economics and mathematics with computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995, and his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 2001. 1

    Career

    Khwaja joined Harvard University in June 2001 as an assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor in June 2006 and to professor in January 2010, and has been a visiting faculty member at Yale University's Economic Growth Center and at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley. In October 2005 he released RISE-PAK, a searchable database for earthquake relief in Pakistan. He is a co-founder of the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) and co-director of Harvard Evidence for Policy Design. 1

    In 2018 Khwaja was appointed to Pakistan's Economic Advisory Council. He resigned shortly afterwards, in protest, when his colleague Atif Mian was forced off the council because of Mian's Ahmadiyya faith. 1

    Personal life

    Khwaja is a citizen of Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States. He is married to Sehr Jalal and has three children. 1

    Sources

    • The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
    • Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.

    Sources

    1. Asim Khwaja — English Wikipedia
    2. Asim Khwaja — Wikidata Q41804486
    • Asim Khwaja — Urdu Wikipedia
    Cite this page

    islam.museum contributors. “Asim Khwaja”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/asim-khwaja/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-27.

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