Development Studies: Academic Sites, Think Tanks, & Research Centers

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a center within the Economics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose aim is to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is based on scientific evidence. J-PAL and its network of affiliated professors around the world runs and promotes the use of randomized evaluations, similar to clinical trials used in medicine, to rigorously test the effectiveness of social programs and policies aimed at reducing poverty.

Europe's largest research collection on economic and social change in developing countries.

B R E A D is a non-profit organization, founded in 2002, dedicated to encourage research and scholarship in development economics. Our main activities are conferences, a working paper and policy paper series, and a summer school.

CGD is an independent, not-for-profit think tank that works to reduce global poverty and inequality by encouraging policy change in the U.S. and other rich countries through rigorous research and active engagement with the policy community.

The Development Research Institute (DRI) is devoted to rigorous, scholarly research on the economic development and growth of poor countries. An independent and non-partisan organization, DRI is led by NYU Professors William Easterly and Yaw Nyarko and is home to a growing team of researchers. DRI seeks to engage the academic world and the wider public about effective solutions to world poverty through a range of activities including our Aid Watch initiative.

The Earth Institute (Columbia University)

The Earth Institute’s overarching goal is to help achieve sustainable development primarily by expanding the world’s understanding of Earth as one integrated system. We work toward this goal through scientific research, education and the practical application of research for solving real-world challenges. The Earth Institute is directed by Jefferey Sachs.

The Global Development Research Center is a virtual organization that carries out initiatives in education, research and practices, in the spheres of environment, urban, community and information, and at scales that are effective.

The Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University works to generate shared and sustainable prosperity in developing economies. The CID actively creates, applies and integrates knowledge from across Harvard University and beyond to advance understanding of development challenges and solutions. Our mission is to improve development practice and resolve the dilemmas of public policy associated with eradicating global poverty.

The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) is a leading global academic center for international development research, teaching and communications. IDS was founded in 1966 and enjoys an international reputation based on the quality of its work and its commitment to applying academic skills to real world challenges. Its purpose is to understand and explain the world, and to try to change it – to influence as well as to inform. See also IDS's information gateway:ELDIS..

Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA) shall promote high quality research in the interconnected areas of human development and capability. It shall be concerned with research in these areas across a broad range of topics where the human development and capability approaches have made and can make significant contributions, including the quality of life, poverty, justice, gender, development and environment inter alia. It shall further work in all disciplines - such as economics, philosophy, political theory, sociology and development studies - where such research is, or may be, pursued. While primarily an academic body, the Association shall bring together those primarily involved in academic work with practitioners who are involved in, or interested in, the application of research from the fields of human development and capability to the problems they face.

The Development Studies Institute (DESTIN) was established in 1990 to promote interdisciplinary post-graduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change. The Institute is dedicated to understanding problems of poverty and late development within local communities, national political and economic systems and in the international system

Development research and teaching has never been as strong at McGill as it is today, and this is reflected in the creation of the new Institute for the Study of International Development, ISID.

Welcome to PRAXIS, the international development homepage of Prof. Richard J. Estes of the University of Pennsylvania. PRAXIS provides access to a vast array of archival resources on international and comparative social development. The intellectual commitment of PRAXIS is to the promotion of positive social change through informed action.

Created and managed by Dr. Róbinson Rojas, The Róbinson Rojas Archive is an academic site promoting excellence in teaching and researching economics and development.

Third World Network (TWN) is an independent non-profit international network of organisations and individuals involved in issues relating to development, Third World and North-South affairs.

UTIP is a small research group concerned with measuring and explaining movements of inequality in wages and earnings and patterns of industrial change around the world.We believe we can establish reasonably reliable relationships between these measures and the broader concepts of inequality, such as income inequality.