Debraj Ray is presently Julius Silver Professor of Economics and Director of Graduate Studies in Economics at New York University. He has held long-term positions at Stanford University, the Indian Statistical Institute, and at Boston University, where he was Director of the Institute for Economic Development. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, MIT, the Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (Rio de Janeiro), the People's University of China (Beijing) and the London School of Economics. He is a Research Affiliate of the Instituto de Análisis Económico (Barcelona). Debraj Ray is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal, and a recipient of the Outstanding Young Scientists Award (in the area of mathematics) from the Indian National Science Academy. He received the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford and the Gittner Award for Teaching Excellence in Economics at Boston University. He is a Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa, University of Oslo. Ray has served on the editorial board of Econometrica, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Development Economics, the Journal of Economic Growth, the Japanese Economic Review, Games and Economic Behavior, American Economic Journal Microeconomics, and is a Foreign Editor of the Review of Economic Studies. He is co-editor of the Econometric Society journal, Theoretical Economics.

Ray received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Calcutta in 1977 and a M.A. and Ph.D.  in Economics  from Cornell University in 1981 and 1983 respectively.