In 1974 he received his B.A with honors in Mathematics at Delhi University. In 1977 he got his B.Sc in Economics at London School of Economics.
In 1978 he received his M.Sc in Economometrics at London School of Economics.[2]
Bhargava received his Ph.D. in econometrics from the London School of Economics under the supervision of John Denis Sargan in 1982. His thesis (The Theory of the Durbin–Watson Statistic with special reference to the Specification of Models in Levels as against in Differences) led to many tests for unit roots that were used in co-integration analyses. Bhargava was also one of the pioneers in econometric methods for longitudinal ("panel") data.[3]
Career
From 1983 till 1989 he served as an Assistant Professor of Economics at University of Pennsylvania. From 1989 till 1993 he was an Associate Professor of Economics at University of Houston and was a full professor from 1994 to around 2012. During the autumn of 1995 he was invited to teach at Harvard University as a visiting professor.
In 1999 he was a Senior Global Health Leadership Fellow at World Health Organization. In 2005 he served as a visiting professor at University of Paris.[2]
A collection of his works has been reprinted in a separate volume in 2006 entitled "Econometrics, statistics and computational approaches in food and health sciences".[3] A monograph entitled "Food, economics, and health" was published in 2008 [4] and was reviewed in the Journal of the American Medical Association with the commendation that "Alok Bhargava is a pioneer in efforts to break down the existing firewalls between the biomedical and social sciences and between the health profession and the food systems (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/186008).
Selected publications
Bhargava, A.; Franzini, L.; Narendranathan, W. (October 1982). "Serial Correlation and the Fixed Effects Model". The Review of Economic Studies. 49 (4): 533. doi:10.2307/2297285. JSTOR2297285.
Sargan, J. D.; Bhargava, Alok (January 1983). "Testing Residuals from Least Squares Regression for Being Generated by the Gaussian Random Walk". Econometrica. 51 (1): 153. doi:10.2307/1912252. JSTOR1912252.
Bhargava, Alok (July 1986). "On the Theory of Testing for Unit Roots in Observed Time Series". The Review of Economic Studies. 53 (3): 369–384. doi:10.2307/2297634. JSTOR2297634.
Bhargava, Alok (1991). "Estimating Short and Long Run Income Elasticities of Foods and Nutrients for Rural South India". Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (Statistics in Society). 154 (1): 157–174. doi:10.2307/2982709. JSTOR2982709.
Bhargava, Alok; Jamison, Dean T; Lau, Lawrence J; Murray, Christopher JL (May 2001). "Modeling the effects of health on economic growth". Journal of Health Economics. 20 (3): 423–440. doi:10.1016/S0167-6296(01)00073-X. PMID11373839.
Bhargava, Alok (August 2005). "AIDS epidemic and the psychological well-being and school participation of Ethiopian orphans". Psychology, Health & Medicine. 10 (3): 263–275. doi:10.1080/13548500412331334181. S2CID143754659.