"[4] In 1936, Eshag won a scholarship from the Bank Melli Iran to study accountancy at the London School of Economics.
Whilst there his interests turned to economics and he was noticed by J. M. Keynes as being "a man of promise".
He was appointed by the United Nations (UN) as an Economic Affairs Officer in the UN Secretariat and spent nearly a decade there.
His period with the UN ended after a confrontation with UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld over the latter's request that Eshag tone down his critique of western powers' role in the Congo.
In 1963, Eshag became a Fellow of Wadham College and a lecturer at the Institute of Economics and Statistics in Oxford University.