Professor Bibek Debroy was educated in Presidency College, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India (BA Economics, 1973), Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India (MA Economics, 1976) and Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK (MSc Economics, 1981).

He has held the following positions – Research Associate, Presidency College, Kolkata (1979-1983); Associate Professor, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, University of Poona, Pune, India (1983-87); and Professor, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi (1987 to 1993). In 1993, he quit a teaching career to head a project on law reforms in India, started by the Indian Ministry of Finance, and United Nations Development Program. This project was named "LARGE" and lasted from 1993 to 1998. In between, from 1994 to 1995, he was also a Consultant with the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance. In 1995, he was the Chief Consulting Economist with the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi. From 1993 to 1998, he was a Visiting Professor at the National Law School University of India in Bangalore. From 1997 to 2004, he was the Director of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. From 2005 to 2006, he was the Secretary General of the Punjab, Haryana and Delhi Chamber of Commerce and Industry in New Delhi. From January 2007, he has been Professor at the International Management Institute, New Delhi and, from April 2007, Research Professor at Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

Professor Debroy is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council. He has been a member of several government-appointed task forces, committees and commissions. He is also on the board of some Indian companies and on the governing boards of research institutes such as the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. In 2006 and 2007, he was the rapporteur for one of the working groups in the United Nations Commission on Legal Empowerment for the Power. He has also undertaken consultancy work for several organisations. With Laveesh Bhandari as a co-author, he has published several inter-state comparisons and the annual ranking he worked on for India Today is often quoted.

From 1995, Professor Debroy has been a regular columnist and consulting/contributing editor with various newspapers/magazines such as Business Standard, Financial Express and Telegraph. At present, he is a contributing editor with the Indian Express group (Indian Express and Financial Express).

He has a serious interest in Indology and has translated the Puranas, the Vedas and the Upanishads into English, apart from a book on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (1989). His translation of the Gita was published by Penguin in 2006. Presently, he is engaged in a 10-volume unabridged English translation of the Mahabharata, to be also published by Penguin, beginning with the first volume in 2009.