Phanindra V. Wunnava is the David K. Smith '42 Chair in Applied Economics at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, and a Research Fellow at IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor), Bonn, Germany. He was a Research Associate in economics at the State University of New York-Binghamton, NY during the academic years 1989-1992. During the academic year 1999-2000 he was a Visiting Scholar/Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

He was trained under a noted labor economist Solomon Polachek of State University of New York-Binghamton, and received a Ph.D. in economics in 1986. His fields of interest are applied econometrics and labor economics. Wunnava received his Bachelor of Commerce and Master of Commerce degrees from the Andhra University (India), Master of Arts and Doctor of Arts degrees in economics from the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida.

Wunnava's articles appeared in wide range of scholarly journals (such as Review of Economics and Statistics, Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Labor Research, Economics Letters, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Eastern Economic Journal, Applied Economics, Applied Financial Economics, Applied Economics Letters, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Small Business Economics, Economics of Education Review, American Economist, Journal of Business and Economic Studies, North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Journal of Forensic Economics, and Empirical Economics Letters) covering the areas of life-cycle union non-union wage/benefit differentials, firm size effects, gender and racial wage differentials, efficiency wage models, charitable contributions towards higher education, disincentive effects of unemployment insurance, infant mortality, effect of net foreign investment on manufacturing productivity, time-series properties of the north American unemployment rates and Asian stock markets, the effect of political regimes on economic growth, fertility determinants, and determinants of internet diffusion. He routinely serves as a referee for a number of scholarly journals.

Wunnava published a coauthored book titled: Human Capital Investment A History of Asian Immigrants and Their Families (with Harriet Duleep, Mark Regets, and Seth Sanders) Palgrave Macmillan 2020. More details are available at the publisher's web site: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030470821. He also co-edited New Approaches to Economic and Social Analyses of Discrimination (with Richard R. Cornwall) Praeger 1991, Immigrants and Immigration Policy: Individual Skills, Family Ties, and Group Identities (with Harriet Duleep) JAI Press 1996, and Changing Role of Unions: New Forms of Representation, M. E. Sharpe 2004 -- has been recognized by the Industrial Relations Section of Princeton University as one of the twelve Noteworthy Books in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics for 2004.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in March 2007.