Cornell Prof. Kaushik Basu begins term as President of International Economic Association

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NEW YORK: Indian American Kaushik Basu, the C. Marks Professor of International Studies and professor of economics in the College of Arts and Sciences, began his three-year term as president of the International Economic Association (IEA) June 23.

The IEA is a leading organization founded in 1950 for professional economists that seeks to shape global economic policy and research. Among IEA past presidents are Nobel laureates Kenneth Arrow, Robert Solow, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz.

Basu’s leadership kicked off with the closing of IEA’s 18th World Congress in Mexico, at which Basu spoke, along with Cornell’s Ravi Kanbur, the T.H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, international professor of applied economics and management, and professor of economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; and Michael Waldman, the Charles H. Dyson Professor of Management and professor of economics in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, according to the Cornell Chronicle.

Also speaking were Cornell alumni including James Foster, M.A. ’81, Ph.D. ’82, professor of economics at George Washington University, and Luis-Felipe Lopez-Calva, M.A. ’99, of the World Bank.

Basu served as senior vice president and chief economist at the World Bank from 2012 to 2016 and as the chief economic adviser to the government of India from 2009 to 2012. At Cornell, he has served as chairman of the Department of Economics and as director of the Center for Analytic Economics.

He received a B.A. in economics in 1972 from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, and a M.Sc. in 1974 and a Ph.D. in 1976, both in economics from the London School of Economics.

A fellow of the Econometric Society, Basu has published widely in development economics, industrial organization, game theory and welfare economics. His books include “Analytical Development Economics” (1997), “Prelude to Political Economy: A Study of the Social and Political Foundations of Economics” (2000), “Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics” (2010) and “An Economist in the Real World: The Art of Policymaking in India” (2015).