The Institute for Economic Development (IED) is an umbrella organization within Boston University's Department of Economics focusing on the economic problems of developing countries. To this end, the Institute provides facilities and a supportive intellectual environment for students, faculty and visiting scholars pursuing research in the problems of economic development, and in related areas of economic growth, international economics, and financial institutions.

Activities of the Institute include a weekly seminar series, organization of workshops and conferences, production and dissemination of discussion papers, a variety of special programs focused on specific areas, and administration of research grants. It hosts visitors on both a short term and long term basis. The Institute maintains a computer room catering exclusively to the word-processing and computing needs of graduate students. A prize for the best essay in development economics amongst graduate students is awarded annually, in memory of Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, a key figure in the field at Boston University. Partial travel support has been offered to graduate students for presenting their work at major conferences. Special services for international graduate students include dissertation editing and peer advising.

Active areas of research and discussion at the institute span a broad range of issues that include trade, international finance, labor migration and labor markets, human capital, poverty and discrimination, economics of the family, social norms and cultural values, agrarian contracts, land reform, wage and income inequality, social security, health, public finance, reforms in governance and public enterprises, privatization, decentralization, deforestation, and comparative business strategy. The research methodologies employed represent a combination of theoretical, empirical, historical, and policy analyses, that uniformly aim for high standards of rigor.

Research Grants: Recent research grants administered by IED include: Land Inequality and Environmental Degradation in India; Decentralization in Developing Countries; Land Relations, Decentralization and Deforestation in India; Societal Differences in Innovation Systems: Small vs. Large-scale Apparel Supply Chains; Societal Differences in Apparel Industry Innovations: Pilot Interviews; Sustainability of Common Forests in Northern India. Sponsors include the National Science Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation.

Conferences: IED is a member of the Northeast Universities Development Consortium, which sponsors an annual conference that is the major forum in North America for the field of development economics. The location and sponsorship of the conference rotate among the organizing institutions: Boston University, Harvard University, Yale University, Williams College and Cornell University..

Weekly Seminar Series: During the 2005 academic year, fourteen IED/International Seminars are scheduled. Titles include: Income and Democracy, Socially Desirable Limits on Choice, Network Effects and the Dynamics of Migration and Inequality: Theory and Evidence from Mexico; Natural Selection and the Evolution of Life Expectancy; Global versus Local: Financing of Foreign Direct Investment; and Observing Unobservables: Identifying Information Asymmetries with a Consumer Credit Field Experiment.

Research Review: Beginning in 1999, the Institute began publishing an annual review of research activities. It includes summaries of discussion papers written during the year as well as highlighting other research efforts of IED research affiliates. This review is mailed to over 1400 development economists world-wide and is also available on the IED web-site.

International Health Economics: Faculty affiliated with the Institute have been active on a variety of projects involving international health economics, with funding from the World Bank, USAID, foundations and private consulting companies. Recent studies have been completed on India and Niger, and ongoing research collaboration is occurring with Puerto Rico, Israel and the Netherlands. Graduate students frequently participate in these projects, both as consultants and for dissertation research. Each spring, research papers are discussed at the BU/Harvard/MIT Health Seminar.

Visiting Scholars: Recently, the Institute has served as host to visiting scholars from Spain, Japan, the US, and Finland. Their research interests focus on biased selection in the promotion mechanism in hierarchical social systems; poverty dynamics among Indian states and on firm size distribution and economic growth; the political economy of public good provision and on inequality, governance and economic transformation; intergenerational income mobility in Finland; and the assimilation of immigrants in the 1900s and the effects of immigrants on employment and wages of native born Finns, respectively

Marianne Baxter, Professor, works primarily on topics in international macroeconomics and finance. Her recent research has focussed on the transmission of international disturbances across countries, as well as issues associated with appropriate portfolio choice in international settings.

Maristella Botticini, Associate Professor, specializes in economic history, applied microeconomics, and the economics of institutions. Her recent research focuses on dowries, marriage markets, intergenerational transfers, sex ratios in medieval and Renaissance Florence, human capital, Jewish economic history, public finance, and agrarian contracts.

Christophe Chamley, Professor, concentrates on public finance, macroeconomic theory and policy. His recent research concerns theories of social learning and coordination. Most of his field experience has been in Malawi, Tunisia, Morocco, Ivory Coast and Nigeria.

Peter Doeringer, Professor, is mainly interested in labor and industrial economics, and in industrial relations. His recent research has included comparative business strategy, the role of start-up factories in job creation, older workers and apparel production channels in the U.S.A., U.K., and France. His main field experience outside the United States has been in Canada, Indonesia, Jamaica, and Western Europe.

Randall Ellis, Professor, is a health economist interested in how payment incentives affect the behavior of health plans, health care providers, and consumers. He is currently focusing his research on mechanisms to calculate payments to health plans, and has recently studied health insurance in both the U.S. and in India. His main field experience has been in Egypt, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, and the United States.

Simon Gilchrist, Associate Professor, is an empirical macroeconomist. His recent research focuses on the role of financial market imperfections in amplifying and propagating business cycles, and the growth implications of alternative models of capital accumulation, mostly in the context of the United States.

John Harris, Professor, works on issues of applied macroeconomic theory, regional and urban economics, and migration theory. His recent research includes comparative analysis of economic development in Africa and Southeast Asia. He also has extensive field experience in Africa and Asia, with emphasis on Indonesia, Uganda, Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania.

Leroy Jones, Professor, specializes in policy-oriented micro issues in developing countries. Particular areas of interest include public enterprise, privatization, government-business solutions and industrial organization. He has substantive experience in Indonesia, Korea, Pakistan, Venezuela and thirteen other countries. Professor Jones directs the Institute's Program in Public Enterprise.

Kevin Lang, Professor, is mainly interested in labor economics. He has worked on economic problems of Chile, Israel, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela, and has recently studied the effects of trade liberalization on wages and employment in New Zealand and the assimilation of Russian immigrants to Israel.

Glenn Loury, Adjunct Visiting Professor, is interested in applied microeconomics and the political economy of race. His recent research has been on wage inequality, discrimination in venture capital markets, cooperative credit associations, and public policy issues related to race in the United States. His experience outside the United States has been mainly in Europe and South Africa. Professor Loury also directs the Institute for Race and Social Division.

Robert Lucas, Professor, specializes in international trade, industry, and human resources. His recent research has included union pay differentials in South Africa; industrial pollution in Brazil, China, and Mexico; and population migration in developing countries. He has worked in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Botswana, Egypt, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

Dilip Mookherjee, Professor, specializes in the area of incentives and institutions. His recent research includes tax enforcement and public administration reforms, the role of inequality, and of land reforms and contracting structures in developing countries. His main field experience has been in India.

Andrew Newman, Professor, does research on contracts and organizations, income distribution, and matching relating to the fields of Information Economics and Development Economics

Pankaj Tandon, Associate Professor, concentrates on technological change, microeconomics, and public enterprises. He has recently worked on evaluating privately financed infrastructure projects and privatization programs. His main field experience has been in Egypt, India, Mexico, and Venezuela.

Professors Emeriti: Shane Hunt, Gustav F. Papanek and Paul P. Streeten.