Varadarajan Venkata Chari (born c. 1952) is an Indian-American economist and professor of economics, currently teaches macroeconomic theory, public economics, and monetary economics at the University of Minnesota's College of Liberal Arts. Chari received a Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1974, and was a production engineer at Union Carbide (India) Limited from 1974 to 1976. Dr. Chari is also a fellow of the Econometric Society since 1999 and recipient of the Census Bureau Research Grant since 2005.