| Karthik Ramanna | |
| Citizenship: | American |
| Occupation: | Economist |
| Alma Mater: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Discipline: | Economist |
| Sub Discipline: | Financial Regulation |
| Workplaces: | Oxford University |
| Website: | https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/people/karthik-ramanna |
Karthik Ramanna is Professor of Business & Public Policy and Director of the Master of Public Policy Program at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government.[1] From 2016 to 2023, he was director of Oxford’s Master of Public Policy Program, where he established the leadership curriculum on building trust across divided communities.[2]
Ramanna received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management in 2007 whereupon he joined the faculty of Harvard Business School.[3]
Ramanna's scholarship has also explored regulation and decision-making at the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board.[4] He has also written about the costs and benefits of fair value accounting.[5] His 2015 book Political Standards posits that accounting rule-making is an exemplar of a "thin political market," a regulatory setting of economic consequence in which the general public is largely disinterested and where corporate special interests possess relevant tacit knowledge. This situation can result in regulatory capture.[6]
Ramanna is a proponent of reforming business ethics education, arguing that corporate managers have unique capabilities and duties to steward the basic institutions of capitalism.[7] Prior to Oxford, Ramanna taught leadership, ethics, and financial reporting at Harvard Business School, where he won the International Case Centre's Outstanding Case-Writer prize, dubbed by the Financial Times as “the business school Oscars.”[8] He was recruited to Oxford’s government school from Harvard to help develop the case method of education for public administration,[9] and he has since won the Outstanding Case-Writer prize at Oxford as well.[10]
In 2019, he advised on the UK’s reforms of the audit profession.[11] [12] In 2021, he co-developed with Robert S. Kaplan the E-liability method for climate accounting as an alternative to the GHG Protocol’s Scope 3 standard, which they posited has hindered innovation on emissions reduction.[13] The E-liability method won the Harvard Business Review-McKinsey Prize for “groundbreaking management thinking.”[14]
In 2023, Ramanna was named an advisor to the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.[15]