Avinash Kamalakar Dixit is an Indian-American economist. He is currently John J. F. Sherrerd '52 University Professor of Economics Emeritus at Princeton University, Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics at Lingnan University and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He was born on August 6, 1944 in Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India. He is also Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics at Lingnan University (Hong Kong) and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He previously taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at the University of California, Berkeley, at Balliol College, Oxford and at the University of Warwick. In 1994 Dixit received the first-ever CES Fellow Award from the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich. In January 2016, India announced it will confer the Padma Vibhushan - the second highest of India's civilian honors to Dr. Dixit.

His book publications include Theory of International Trade, The Art of Strategy (with Barry Nalebuff), Investment Under Uncertainty (with Robert Pindyck), Games of Strategy (with Susan Skeath), Lawlessness and Economics: Alternative Modes of Governance, and The Making of Economic Policy: A Transaction Cost Politics Perspective. He has also published numerous articles in professional journals and collective volumes. He was President of the Econometric Society in 2001, and of the American Economic Association in 2008. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992, the National Academy of Sciences in 2005, and the American Philosophical Society in 2010, and was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2006.