Danny Quah

Professor Danny Quah is Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS. He stepped down as dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) on 30 June 2025 after seven years of dedicated service.

Quah’s refined research on inequality and income mobility clearly distils how a vast range of experiences across economies actually suggests that a single narrative on inequality is unlikely to be correct – let alone helpful. Meanwhile, through his impressive work on world order, which applies a macroeconomic approach to international systems by focussing on the supply and demand intrinsic world order, Professor Quah asks: what international system do the world’s Great Powers wish to provide? And what world order does the global community need?

Danny Quah appropriates these two methods to recast analysis of global power shifts, the rise of the East, regional order and models of global power relations. His refreshing and unique perspectives further integrate a broad range of interaction between nations, countries and people within each society.

After becoming a renowned academic voice, Quah has given lectures around the world and has spoken at TEDx three times: in 2016, 2014 and 2012. As a contributor to The South China Morning Post, Quah’s writings have featured on Project Syndicate as well local papers including The Straits Times and Business Times.

Commissioner on the Spence-Stiglitz Commission on Global Economic Transformation, Professor Quah also sits on LSE’s Global Economic Governance Commission. Additionally, he serves on the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association; the Advisory Board for LSE IDEAS; the Eminent Advisory Council of the UNDP Bureau for Asia-Pacific; and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council for Geopolitics. He is currently Vice President at the Economic Society of Singapore.

In 2011, Quah published “The Global Economy’s Shifting Centre of Gravity” – a highly regarded article which penetrated the very dynamics of our global economy’s centrifugal force in relation to the average location of economic activity across geographies. His research has been supported by the Khazanah Research Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the British Academy, the UK’s Economic and Research Council, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Professor Danny Quah formerly studied at Princeton, Minnesota and Harvard.