How To Teach Economics & Game Theory (Indian Institute Of Mgmt Ahmedabad Prof POV) - w/ Viswanath edited transcript

Welcome to the Ready Set Do podcast, where we discuss journeys of not-experts who are just two steps ahead of us. I'm Naman Pandey, and my guest is Professor Viswanath Pingali. He specializes in game theory and microeconomics at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. We begin with his experience getting his PhD at Northwestern University, where he had his first stint as a teacher. Then we discuss becoming an IIM Ahmedabad professor, what surprises students, what business schools do well and what they could do better, and his research around healthcare in India. The goal is to understand what it takes to impart education effectively.

Professor Viswanath, welcome. I'm excited to learn from your teaching experience. What draws you to teaching? What made you realize this was something you wanted to dedicate your career to?

I don't know exactly when it happened, but it goes back to my PhD days. In the US I had to do a teaching assistantship to earn my stipend. I figured out that I was quite good as a teaching assistant, so much so that students reached out to me on their own later as well. I thought this might be a good career for me. At the same time, I wanted to get into industry to understand how it worked. After my PhD I joined consulting, worked there for two years, moved to India, and worked for a year. During that time I taught at a business school part-time.

That was when I discovered that I could hold my own in a class and was quite decent at teaching. In 2010, I think, I made the full plunge back into academia, and 2012 was when I joined IIM Ahmedabad. The challenge in the classroom drives me. You get to read a lot of stuff, including esoteric stuff, and connect the dots in class. You get pushback, then go and read further, take that critique, and reframe an idea so students understand it. I absolutely love the classroom experience. Before IIMA I taught at IFMR, and I loved that experience too. Seeing people understand what I want to convey is probably what gets me going.

I want to step back to your experience at Northwestern, where you got your PhD. I'm based in Chicago, so it's a small world in that way. What was your thesis focused on, and what kind of work were you doing there?

At Northwestern my thesis was basically modeling competition: how do firms compete? That was my primary thesis topic. It combined econometrics and game theory, so I specialized in data and theory. It took me six years to finish my PhD.

Having been in academia in both the US and India, could you contrast those experiences and the students you encountered?

I may not be in a position to give you a contrast of the students. At Northwestern I was a teaching assistant: doubt-clearing sessions, tutorials, and grading. I understood students from a different perspective. At IIMA I am a full-fledged teacher, responsible for their learning. It is probably not a good apples-to-apples comparison. There, I looked at them as people whose doubts I had to clarify and whose papers I had to grade; here, I own the teaching responsibility. Apart from a brief interaction with Kellogg MBA students, the groups I taught were different too. At IIMA I teach MBA students. I don't think comparing the two groups that way would be fair.

What is the process of becoming a professor at an IIM? You can speak to your own experience at IIM Ahmedabad. How does someone get into that role?

The academic job market works more or less the same across the world. At IIMA you typically send a CV with your entire employment history and, more importantly, your publication record. I applied in economics. The institute looks at the economics faculty, identifies a gap, and considers whether you can fill part of that gap. They then call you to give a talk and interact with the faculty. In the talk I present my latest research. It is a full-fledged research seminar, with a lot of back-and-forth. Afterward you meet the members of the economics group and people working in economics who may not formally be part of that group.

A consensus is reached on the candidate, and that is how offers are made. Research becomes a cornerstone of an academic's life throughout their tenure. In my own journey, I met a few faculty members and was inspired by their work. I emailed my CV to the director. One fine day I heard back: why don't you come here and give a talk? I did. It seems they liked what I said, and I liked the interaction, so they made me an offer.

For context, my master's was in Engineering Management at Purdue University. Half my credits came from engineering and half from business school, so I had some exposure to case-based learning and classes that MBA students took. I also have close friends from IIM Ahmedabad, and we compared notes on how our experiences were similar and different. With that in mind, what tends to catch students by surprise when they first start at IIM Ahmedabad?

The academic rigor this place insists upon is the first thing. According to me, rightly so, the place is academically very rigorous. The amount of academic pressure in the first month catches many students off guard. People may have heard that it pushes you to your limits, but until they experience it, they have a very limited clue what that means. As they spend more time here, the second realization is the depth and breadth of activities the place offers. Slowly they fall into their groove and try to make the most of it. We think of IIMA as academic excellence, and it is, but there is a lot more on offer.

There are so many things you can specialize in and so many trade-offs you get to make. Students slowly realize there is more to life, and that is a second stage of their evolution on campus. The third is understanding where they want to work, how they want to work, and what role they want. In the two-year MBA, that could mean a summer internship; in the one-year MBA, it could mean a career transition. For some, the surprise is an ego shattered to pieces: maybe I'm not as good as I thought. Others discover they are better than they expected. Reality is somewhere in the middle. That discovery is probably the biggest journey.

I relate to what you're saying about being surrounded by a peer group you couldn't have anticipated. I never went to IIM Ahmedabad, but my first month at Purdue felt similar. For me it was classic imposter syndrome: how did I get here? I'm not even half as smart as some of these people. What am I going to do? Eventually reality kicks in and you have to work with where you are.

Imposter syndrome is real in top places across the world. Every day you can doubt yourself: what am I doing in the middle of all these people? Somehow you survive. At some point you have to embrace the fact that life has given you some luck and make the most of it. That is the spirit I see IIMA teaching many of us, including me. I come to the realization that I'm lucky. Let's not waste that.

Would you comment on the broad selection criteria for the IIMs, particularly the CAT? If you had a magic wand and could change anything in the test, what would you change?

When the older IIMs offer perhaps 3,000 seats and 1.5 lakh people want them, I'm not sure you can have a very different system. Those are the approximate numbers I'm using to explain the constraint. The schools have also evolved to recognize that this need not be the only way people enter: experienced people should be able to enter too. That is how the one-year MBA took shape. For those candidates, CAT may not be the appropriate test; GMAT is another route. So you have different selection processes for one-year and two-year programs. With unlimited resources and time, I would probably interview everybody, work out where they fit, and take those with the right mindset. But that is not the situation.

What about the skills the test measures: quantitative ability, verbal ability, and logical reasoning? Is there anything you would change there? I'm asking about what is measured, rather than how difficult the test should be.

Maybe not. Look at other standardized tests, including undergraduate tests like the SAT: they measure many of these same skills. There must be something in these skills that is necessary to evaluate somebody. How difficult or easy the test should be is a separate question; I'm not commenting on that. In any answer I give, keep the demand and supply in perspective. Demand for these places is far greater than the supply. At some level, you need a way to screen people. It is not enough to say that another process would be better without explaining how to conduct it at this scale.

Business aptitude, or how moldable a person is, are things I would like to test. But no matter how much I think about it, doing that at scale seems impossible to me. I would rather have a standardized test that is the same for everybody. Both the fish and the elephant need to know how to run; it seems I don't have a choice. You are not measuring mathematics alone, data skills alone, language alone, or logic alone. You are using a combination. If somebody is stronger in one area, perhaps they make up for another. That is how I would look at it.

What do you primarily teach at IIM Ahmedabad? And how do those courses fit with the other things people learn in business school?

I teach microeconomics, which is part of the foundation, and an elective in game theory. Of course I would like to think they are important: you are asking about my livelihood! But there is a useful distinction in management education between perspective-building courses and skill-based courses. They do different things for the student.

Perspective-building courses help you understand how the world around you works and what motivates people. Why is the budget important? Why does the finance ministry matter? What is the role of external affairs, philosophy, or society? These are not courses where you go into the office tomorrow and immediately perform a task better. Skill-based courses are things like managing finances, marketing a product, building strategy, recruiting and nurturing talent, understanding teams, and working in them. Your working pattern can change directly after taking those courses. Both belong in management education; they are not doing exactly the same job.

I think microeconomics is largely a perspective-building course rather than a skill course. Game theory is a mixture, but it also leans more toward perspective-building. I think of myself as one of those big-picture teachers. Am I going to say this is better than marketing or strategy? No. I would like to think it is important, and I'll leave it there.

I've always been interested in microeconomics but haven't properly studied it. Are there books or other resources you would recommend to someone who wants to get a working understanding?

One book I refer students to is The Undercover Economist. I also uploaded a synopsis of my class notes, which I think I called Essentials of Micro for a Manager, on LinkedIn. You should be able to find it there. My microeconomics course has 15 sessions, divided into five modules of three sessions each. After every module, I send students an email with bullet points about what we covered and questions that encourage discussion over email. I can then take that discussion up at the beginning of the next module. That is how the classes proceed for me.

People had asked how they could learn more about what I do. One day I thought: here are my notes; use them as you see fit. I am not claiming originality of the content, only of how it is presented. Most of what I talk about, apart from some of my own research, is inspired by textbooks or other people's work. If a student downloads the notes, reads them, and understands microeconomics a little better, I feel honored. That was the intention behind sharing them.

One of my students also transcribed my entire game theory class notes and gifted me a copy. I made edits and posted those on LinkedIn too. The microeconomics resource was a summary; the game theory resource was actual notes from a 25-session course. Those notes inspired me to launch a Coursera course on game theory that people could take for free, with a cost if they wanted a certificate. I teach microeconomics with some game theory, and game theory with some microeconomics and behavioral economics. My LinkedIn posts are where I shared those resources and the course information.

What do the IIMs do particularly well when it comes to business education? You can focus on IIM Ahmedabad and the schools you know, rather than making a comparison with Northwestern if that isn't appropriate.

To me, a lot of the value comes from being connected to industry and the world of practice. I'll speak particularly about Ahmedabad because it is the school I know best. I'm in touch with colleagues at some of the other older IIMs, and I believe the situation is similar; I would put ISB in that conversation too. For example, I'm associated with a legal think tank as a senior fellow. That keeps me involved in discussions around competition policy, and those conversations come into the classroom. Those connections make a difference to what an instructor can bring beyond a textbook definition.

You can take a textbook and define a topic, but that by itself won't connect with students, especially when attention spans are so short. You have to connect it with something they saw yesterday, perhaps an Instagram video. That is where the instructor's ability matters. It comes from being clued into what is happening around the world. Why are big technology platforms in legal trouble? Why are they discussed positively and negatively in the news? These are ways into the underlying ideas. Research is another part of it: research requires you to read a lot, and that reading broadens your horizons. A teacher with broader horizons has more to bring to class.

Then there are the alumni. At Ahmedabad, alumni are very keen to come into the classroom and contribute their perspective on topics I teach. The combination of connections with practice, research and reading, and alumni involvement is why I think we can provide a very good education.

How are those industry connections formed? Is it through organizations on campus, or is there another mechanism by which professors and industry begin working together?

Research. You publish your research; industry has problems and sees that you may have a perspective on them. I have published and given talks in forums involving competition. If you are a competition lawyer or a firm facing a competition issue, you may think I can help answer a question and reach out. I give talks to law firms, and they might feel I am the appropriate person to write a report on a particular problem. It can work the same way with government: there is an issue, and someone thinks you may have something useful to say about it.

I also work on healthcare and have published on tuberculosis. Somebody designing a tuberculosis-related plan might read my paper, and a connection is formed. A doctor working on TB might encounter the research. One of my papers that was moving toward publication came about because I gave a talk on TB, a doctor heard it, and reached out asking whether we could do something together. That is how these relationships can begin: someone recognizes a relevant perspective in your research and starts a conversation.

I'm curious about that. Do you also have an interest in medicine? How does an economist get involved in that work?

Let me be very clear: I'm not supposed to prescribe medicines. One of my research areas is public health. Healthcare is an area where a lot of money is spent, so economics is everywhere in it. That is how I got into healthcare research and how it became one of my passionate areas. The other is technology and how it constantly evolves and changes. Firms working in those areas can naturally be interested in that research.

You mentioned reduced attention spans. When you're teaching, can you tell who is paying attention and who isn't? How do you keep the room engaged?

I would like to believe I can. Normally I don't allow electronic gadgets in class. I also joke that I've become very good at throwing chalk as a wake-up call! More often than not, you can tell whether people are engaged. This is where the instructor matters. Teaching a classroom is an art: you are not simply delivering content, you are delivering a performance in which the content is the script. You have to ad-lib around that script and keep people involved. You might use cold calling, or ask people to comment on what you've said. There are several ways to engage a class.

One of my favorite classes at Purdue was strategic management. The whole class was built around cases: read the case beforehand, then spend the lecture interacting. Do you use case-based learning, or do you work mainly from the notes you've put together?

Cases are some of the props for me; they aren't the be-all and end-all of a course. I'm flexible with them. Some are my own cases, and some are papers I've written on real-life phenomena. A paper may not be structured as a case study, but it still gives us a real-life problem to discuss in class. All kinds of things are possible. I can't simply say I do cases, but I can't say I don't do them either. I use a mixture.

We've talked about what IIMs do well. What could they do better?

The world and industry are changing phenomenally fast. I think we do reasonably well at adapting, and new things are continuously coming into our classes, but you can always argue that we should do it better. That applies to every business school. Updating the curriculum faster and bringing the most relevant topics into class are areas for improvement. I'm not saying those things don't happen; they happen at a fairly fast pace already. They can always happen faster. That is the main thing I would point to.

Given that pace of change, what do you envision for business education in India over the next five or ten years? Will there be more IIMs, or will other institutions become more prominent?

I expect a lot of investment in technology in education. The two-year MBA remains popular, but the one-year MBA is gaining traction. I also see more learning happening online. After COVID, our interaction with industry increased manifold for a simple reason: we discovered another mechanism through which we could talk to each other. This podcast is an example. I don't know everyone in the audience, but I can reach people who might learn something from the discussion. I expect more of that technology in the classroom, making classroom discussion richer. I also expect short, focused courses to gain traction.

That answers the question. To give you a better idea of the audience, they're generally curious working professionals around 25 to 35 who like learning new ideas and understanding how the world works. There is often an India-US overlap: people from India who currently live in the US and may move back.

With your permission, let me do a little marketing for my course. I have a game theory course on Coursera in a very non-technical format. The subject is one of the highly subscribed electives I teach at IIMA. I would love people to check it out. At the time we're discussing it, taking the course is free, while a certificate costs a little. I'm at a point in my career where I want to reach more people. That is precisely why I'm suggesting it.

I was going to check it out anyway. Yesterday I saw a game theory book at a friend's house, and I realized my exposure to the subject is only about an hour of lectures. It's very surface-level. It seems to be something you can use to think about everyday situations, and even events such as the Cold War. I'm very curious to learn more through the course.

What do you say to people who argue that you don't need an MBA to start a successful business? There are many examples of people doing it without formal business education.

They are right, absolutely. But there is a nuance. You can learn a lot online, so why join a school? You can avoid mistakes other people learned the hard way. To me, that is an important part of business education. There are also hard skills: understanding leverage, knowing which financial metrics to look at in a company, and data analytics. You could learn those on YouTube too. Instead of curating 50, 60, or 70 courses yourself, you are committing a two-year period to a structured education. That is one part of the value, but it isn't the only part.

An MBA should also lead to self-reflection. If you're continuously working and fitting in a video here and there, how much reflection is possible? Dedicated time lets you ask: I've done these classes and learned these things, but how do they apply to me? What fascinates me? What do I actually want to do going forward? These are questions worth spending time on. A collection of online courses may not give you that same space. The value isn't only access to information; it is also having a period in which you can think seriously about what you want to do with it.

The other place it comes together is the peer group. You're with people thinking about the same questions from multiple perspectives. One of the biggest strengths of a management school has to be diversity in the classroom. An economist, a doctor, a chartered accountant, and a parent can look at the world very differently. Even a parent who is a chartered accountant may see things differently from a parent who is an engineer. These backgrounds bring different perspectives to the same discussion. It matters that you are sitting with people who won't automatically frame a problem the way you do.

Take my work on tuberculosis. TB is a health problem, but I can contribute to a discussion about making treatment delivery better without telling anybody which drug to take. Can we improve delivery mechanisms or incentives? Can we justify additional costs? My perspective as an economist is strongly about costs. A doctor might focus on a breakthrough that improves treatment. A sociologist might focus on transmission and the social ramifications, including the stigma a person or family can face. We are looking at the same problem, but each of us notices something different. That is why the problem isn't exhausted by one professional perspective.

With HIV, for instance, I am emphasizing the psychological trauma as well as the disease itself. You cannot frame it as a matter for doctors alone; psychological and other support also need consideration. That is what diversity brings to the table. A business school should train people to embrace diversity of thought and sharpen decisions through it. You cannot have a uniform group deciding how the whole world needs to work. People of my generation, and older generations, should recognize that we do not have all the answers.

Imagine discussing a case with classmates whose views differ from yours. An American might approach an operations problem by asking for the standard operating procedure, while an Indian might ask what the jugaad is. By jugaad I mean that street-smart way of solving a problem. Even within India, people from different regional backgrounds can think differently: a Tamilian, a Telugu person, a Gujarati, or a Bengali can bring a different thought process. That is part of what an MBA brings to the table. From a strictly skills standpoint, is an MBA necessary? Probably not. As a holistic package, I think it can be useful. And be clear: I make my living teaching MBAs. You don't have to take that view at face value.

The way you connected diversity with your public-health work makes the idea much more concrete for me. You hear that diversity is a strength, but I don't think I'd fully understood the different uses of it until you put those perspectives together. The effects on society, the medical question, and the economic question are all part of the same situation.

For a long time, maternity policy for women was being designed by middle-aged men sitting in a corner of the capital. That is another way to understand why diversity is needed.

I'm passionate about healthcare and want to make a difference in India. At the time of this conversation, my plan is to move back permanently the following year. It is something I think about often.

I made that move myself roughly 15 years ago. I have a feeling you may not regret it. Let me give you a philosophy I've shared with friends, relatives, and family. If you're working in that extremely rarefied world, what I call Nobel-level work, I wouldn't automatically recommend returning. In some fields, particularly the social sciences, I think the environment in the West may give you better chances at that level. That is my view; India may be there in some circles I don't know about. At the other extreme, if you are only just making ends meet, conditions may not be great for you either. For people between those extremes, I think India can be a good place in the long run, even if they have doubts.

When you say Nobel-level, do you mean research and academia specifically?

Not only academia. I also mean somebody aiming to build at the level of a Bill Gates or Elon Musk. The surrounding community matters: there is a network effect from being among people doing that kind of work. You are not just an individual genius. A society and an ecosystem help turn an idea into something real. Suppose you have an electric-car idea. You need a designer to give it shape, engineers and technologists to make it work, and somebody who can market it. That combination matters. I don't think it was equally available in India at the time of this conversation, although it was getting there.

That is what I mean by the rarefied environment: being at the edge of creating technology, not simply using it. Many Indian firms use cutting-edge technology in their business models. Creating something like ChatGPT is a different kind of challenge. I'm distinguishing using the technology from building the underlying breakthrough and the ecosystem around it. For that particular situation, I still have doubts about recommending the move in the same way.

How many years do you think it will be before India has its own version of an Elon Musk?

That is very difficult to answer. It could be tomorrow, or we could still be answering the same question 20 years from now. I don't know. It would need a crystal ball, and even then I doubt it. I see pieces moving in the right direction on multiple dimensions. But technology doesn't always shift gradually; it can change dramatically overnight. I can't predict that, so I will leave the question unanswered.

Professor, thank you for sharing your experiences and taking the time for our listeners. I could keep asking questions for hours, but I know you have another meeting. I'll link your course in the episode description. That brings us to the end of episode 24 of Ready Set Do. Thank you for sharing these conversations with people who benefit from them. The YouTube comments are where I look for feedback and guest nominations. I'll see you in the next one.