Centre for Public Policy at IIMB hosts a public lecture by Prof. James Foster on July 11

Bengaluru: The Centre for Public Policy (CPP) at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) is delighted to host Prof. James Foster on July 11 (Tuesday), 2017. James Foster is the Oliver T. Carr Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, George Washington University, USA. Prof. Foster will deliver a special lecture on Analyzing Intergenerational Mobility: Measures, Curves and Welfare, at IIMB.

Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics – using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the well-being of people. His joint 1984 Econometrica paper (with Joel Greer and Erik Thorbecke) is one of the most cited papers on poverty. It introduced the FGT Index, which has been used in thousands of studies and was employed in targeting the Progresa CCT program in México. Other research includes work on economic inequality with Amartya Sen; on the distribution of human development with Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva and Miguel Szekely; on multidimensional poverty with Sabina Alkire; and on literacy with Kaushik Basu. Prof. Foster regularly teaches introductory and doctoral courses on international development and each spring joins Professor Basu in presenting an undergraduate course on Game Theory and Strategic Thinking, to which staff and Board members of the World Bank are also invited.

Prof. Foster is also Research Fellow at the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI), Department of International Development, Oxford University, and a member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group (HCEO), Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, University of Chicago. This year he is serving on the World Bank’s Commission on Global Poverty.