Mission
The PCED is a (financially) small but ambitious program. A major objective of the program, when it was founded in 1985 by Erik Thorbecke, was to foster an exchange of ideas on development by bringing together development specialists from different parts of the university. The same objective continues to guide the organization of the PCED. However, some new activities have been added on and some shift in focus has occurred after Kaushik Basu took over in 2000 as the new director. It was decided that, apart from the regular seminars, once every two or three years there would be a general, multi-disciplinary conference on development and, interspersed between, such conferences, in other years, there would be conferences that have a regional focus. In keeping with this plan, in 2000, the Program organized the year 2000 NEUDC Conference at Cornell on October 6 and 7. NEUDC is an annual conference that used to move among Harvard, Williams College, Yale and Boston University. This was the first time that it came to Cornell and now Cornell is a regular member of the NEUDC set, which means that the conference will be hosted by Cornell every five years. The involvement of Cornell in NEUDC would not have been feasible without the organizational support of PCED. The first conference on a regional theme was held in April 2002 and was focused on the contemporary Indian economy. The Indian Economy Conference brought together economists from India and the U.S., as well as a number of other social scientists, who have been involved in research on India. It also brought on campus, India's most successful software CEO, Mr. Narayana Murthy, who has subsequently become a trustee of Cornell and Professor Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in Economics, who was also a Distinguished A.D. White Professor at Cornell some years ago.
In May 2004, PCED organized a major international conference, 75 Years of Development Research, where close to 150 papers were presented by participants from around the world. On May 5 and 6, 2006, PCED is to host the BREAD conference on Development Economics. This is a small conference where 8 papers will be presented. But some of the world’s leading practitioners of development are expected to be on campus for this. On September 29 and 30, 2006, NEUDC returns to Cornell for the second time. As before, this is expected to be a very large conference.