The CEA is the ex-officio cadre-controlling authority of the Indian Economic Service.

Four CEAs have gone on to become the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India - I. G. Patel, Manmohan Singh, Bimal Jalan and Raghuram Rajan, and one (Rakesh Mohan) became the Deputy Governor of the RBI.

The extent to which the Government takes into account the advice of the Chief Economic Adviser has generally been considered to be open-ended.

According to him, the only clearly defined job of the CEA was to produce the Economic Survey of India preceding the Union Budget.

[3] Below is a list of Chief Economic Advisers that have been appointed by the Government of India since Independence in 1947.