Pathak was educated at Harvard University where he received bachelor's and master's degrees in applied mathematics, summa cum laude, and PhD in business economics in 2007 with the support of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.
[4] From 2002-2003, Pathak served as a visiting fellow at the University of Toulouse where he studied under Jean Tirole, the 2014 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
At MIT, Pathak co-founded and serves as Director of the School Effectiveness & Inequality Initiative, a group of economists who study the economics of education and the connections between human capital and the American income distribution.
[6] Pathak is an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and a recipient of a 2012 Presidential Early Career for Scientists and Engineers by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
[8] In 2018 he was named one of "the decade’s eight best young economists" by The Economist[9] and awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, for his work that "blends institutional knowledge, theoretical sophistication, and careful empirical analysis to provide insights that are of immediate value to important public-policy issues.”[10][11] Pathak is best known for his work in market design.
The team of economists identified parents in Boston who developed heuristics on how to play this real-world game so that their children would not be unassigned, leaving those unaware of these features disadvantaged.
[14] The Boston and New York reforms were recognized as part of the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences awarded to Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd Shapley for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design.
In 2012, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino commissioned Pathak's lab to write a report alternative zone configurations in the choice plan, including a return to neighborhood schools.