Dr. S.L. Shetty was Director of EPW Research Foundation (EPWRF) from its inception in March 1993, and continued in that capacity for 16 years until April 2009. Since then, he has been associated with the institution as Adviser. Earlier Dr. Shetty served the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for about 24 years and retired as Adviser-in-Charge of its Department of Economic Analysis and Policy. While in the RBI, apart from spending 4 years on a foreign assignment with the Reserve Bank of Vanuatu (1983-87), Dr. Shetty worked as a faculty of the National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM) for two years (1977-79) on a sabbatical from the RBI. It was during this period that he wrote the well-known publication Structural Retrogression in the Indian Economy since the Mid-1960s (February 1978). Also, a study on the “Performance of Banks Since Nationalisation: Promise and Reality” was completed during this period and it was published in the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) in August 1978.

In the EPWRF, Dr. Shetty has been engaged in data base studies on different segments of the macroeconomy; these studies have attempted long time series for the post-Independence period for such areas as National Accounts Statistics, Annual Survey of Industries, Domestic Product of States, banking statistics, price indices, central and state finances, export-import trade, exchange rate of the rupee and poverty estimates. Several research papers have been produced by Dr. Shetty from out of these studies.

Dr. Shetty has completed editing a large 475-page literature review study on “Microfinance in India” which has been published by the Academic Foundation (2012). The study brings out the dichotomy between the formal financial system and India’s economic structure which is dominated by massive poor and vulnerable groups, the role of the financial sector in serving the informal credit markets, the limitations of microfinance in dealing with wider spectrum of informal sectors, and puts forth suggestions for resurrection of the rural financial architecture and within it, for expanding the role of banks in promoting self-help groups (SHGs) and for retaining the “service” character of mFI movement, which also the Malegam Committee sought to emphasize. Dr. Shetty has just published yet another study on “Agricultural Credit in India: Trends, Regional Spreads and Database Issues” on behalf of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), Mumbai, 2014. Besides, Dr. Shetty has just published his doctoral thesis written over 50 years ago in 1970:
titled, “Tax Burden on Farm and Non-farm Sectors in India: An Inter-Sectoral and Inter-Class Analysis”

Based on his empirical studies and participation in policy debates, Dr. Shetty has been nominated to serve on a few committees appointed by the RBI, NABARD and the Government of India.

He is recipient of most prestigious Prof. P.V. Sukhatme NATIONAL AWARD IN STATISTICS from MOSPI in 2020; SANKHYIKI BHUSHAN Award from Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics in 2015; and Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (FNAAS) in 2019.