Kaushik Basu, C. Marks Professor of International Studies and Professor of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences,elected president of the International Economic Association (IEA), began his three-year term on Friday, June 23. The IEA is a leading organization founded in 1950 for professional economists and 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, 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, Charles H. Dyson Professor of Management and Professor of Economics in the College of Business. Cornell alumni were also well represented, including James Foster MA ’81, PhD ‘82, Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics at George Washington University, and Luis-Felipe Lopez-Calva MA ‘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 advisor 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 at Cornell.
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 the areas of development economics, industrial organization, game theory and welfare economics. His books include “Analytical Development Economics” (1997, MIT Press), “Prelude to Political Economy: A Study of the Social and Political Foundations of Economics” (2000, Oxford University Press), “Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics” (2010, Princeton University Press) and “An Economist in the Real World: The Art of Policymaking in India” (2015, The MIT Press).
