PIDE Annual Report 2008-09

The discipline of development economics has made tremendous progress in the past five decades. These advances have been reflected in the activities of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), the leading research institute of the country which recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. During this time, the Institute had expanded its role from conducting basic research in economics and demography to other areas, in particular economic anthropology with the setting up of the Applied Socio-cultural Processes Division. In the mid1970s, the Institute was given the task to train middle and senior level government

officials in the field of project appraisal, monitoring and implementation. The next major task undertaken by the PIDE was in the year 2000 when the PhD Programme in Economics was launched. The policy- makers felt that such a programme was necessary to build the indigenous pool of trained economists to assist in analysing the complex economic and social issues confronting the country. Since its inception, the PhD programme has been go ing from strength to strength, with ten scholars being awarded the doctoral degree in Economics and two having completed all formalities for the award of a doctorate degree. The programme has now been expanded to the MSc level with plans in the future to start a 4-year undergraduate course in Economics. A new teaching programme, the MS Environmental Economics was initiated in 2009. The objective of this programme is to sensitise students to an interpretation and analysis of economic issues related to the environment.