Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (IRIS)
IRIS is a policy research and advisory center dedicated to facilitating economic growth and improving governance in developing and transition countries. In partnership with international donors, reformers, and scholars, IRIS conducts research, designs and implements programs, and promotes the sharing and application of innovative ideas and insights. Based in economics, but taking an interdisciplinary approach, IRIS focuses on the role of institutions — the formal and informal rules by which individuals organize economic, political, and social activity. IRIS’s main areas of expertise include economic and institutional analysis, enterprise development, governance and civil society, and legal and regulatory reform.

IRIS was founded in 1990 by Mancur Olson, an eminent economist and social-science thinker, with a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Olson was dedicated to developing and implementing the insight that strong political and legal institutions are not only a hallmark of good governance but also a critical determinant of economic growth. Development economics and growth theory (which traditionally concentrated on capital accumulation and technological progress) now broadly incorporate Olson’s emphasis on institutions.

Located in the Economics Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, IRIS is staffed by lawyers, economists, and development specialists. IRIS operates within University Research Corporation, International — a non-profit research and advisory affiliate of the University. IRIS is currently led by Executive Director Dr. Dennis H. Wood.

IRIS research has been important to the increasing acceptance of the idea that institutions such as contract enforcement and property rights are important to levels of investment and income in developing economies; that political governance plays a causal role in the quality of these institutions and that symptoms of institutional failure, such as corruption or low levels of credit, will be remedied mainly by attention to institutions that are often taken for granted in more prosperous societies. This work has led to over 260 programs in more than 70 countries including Albania, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Chad, Egypt, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Peru, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and Zambia. Support for IRIS work comes from USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other multilateral donors, bilateral donors such as the German and Swedish development agencies, private foundations and developing country governments.

The work includes collaborative research programs with local universities and institutes, development of legal reforms from civil codes to sector-specific reforms, field studies of institutional quality and service delivery, convening of more than 300 conferences and seminars to disseminate research and best practices and training for local officials and reform leaders. The research program has produced more than 300 working papers and country reports; over 100 articles published in refereed economics, legal, and political science journals; and 15 books.

IRIS provides research opportunities for graduate students and exposure to donors and other institutes around the world with whom IRIS has on-going projects. Several IRIS staff are Maryland graduates; other IRIS graduate student alumni have moved on to jobs in academia, international organizations, and the private sector. A Visiting Scholar program brings leading scholars from around the world to IRIS for extended stays. IRIS also employs around a dozen students each semester to assist in daily operations. More information on IRIS can be found at http://www.iris.umd.edu

INFORUM
Inforum, or the Interindustry Forcasting Project at the University of Maryland, was founded 40 years ago by Dr. Clopper Almon, now Professor Emeritus of the University. It is dedicated to improving business planning, government policy analysis, and the general understanding of the economic environment. Inforum accomplishes this mission through:

• Building and using structural economic models of U.S. and other economies. Inforum pioneered the construction of dynamic, interindustry, macroeconomic models which portray the economy in a unique "bottom-up" fashion.

• Working with government and private sector research sponsors to investigate a variety of issues. Economic projections and analysis using Inforum econometric models are distinguished by detail at the industrial and product level.

• Serving as a training crucible for University of Maryland graduate students who receive valuable training in empirical economics. Indeed, Inforum graduate research assistants have completed over 40 Ph.D. dissertations, most of which have contributed directly to the infrastructure of Inforum.

• Maintaining active and productive ties with a world-wide network of research associates, each of which uses Inforum modeling methods and software. The Inforum partners have held annual conferences since 1993.

Most of Inforum’s analyses involve the development and use of Interindustry-Macroeconomic (IM) models that combine input-output structure with econometric equations in a dynamic and detailed framework. Because of their ability to portray the detailed structure of economies over actual time periods, these models fill an important gap in the inventory of existing models of the U.S. and foreign economies. For example, the models are used to answer "what if" questions on the impact across industries of fluctuation in the macroeconomic environment, such as changes in exchange rate or tax policy. The effects on demands, revenue, production and trade can be described at a level of 97 sectors, or for many scenarios, at the 360 sector-level.

Inforum researchers explore economic phenomena and principles in a nonpartisan fashion, according to generally accepted economic theory and econometric methods, regardless of the implications for public policy or private strategy. It is known for proficiency with specific economic data and methodologies, especially for industry-level data, input-output techniques, global data sets, international comparisons, and modeling software. Using this expertise Inforum also builds industrial forecasting and "satellite" models to connect data for more detailed sectors to a more aggregated environment. Indeed, many sponsors use Inforum software and models on their computers for routine analysis or issue-specific research.

Center for International Economics
The Center for International Economics was created in 1993 to provide both a focal point for research on international economics within the Department of Economics. Center activities have included seminars on international economics, a working paper series, invitations to visiting scholars, and conferences on relevant policy and conceptual issues bringing together experts and policymakers from academia and international financial institutions. The Center also supports a number of graduate students and has sponsored programs with outstanding universities and research centers around the world.

Faculty in the Center include Allan Drazen, Nino Limão, Enrique Mendoza, and Carlos Vegh. Their research spans a diverse set of topics in international finance and trade.

Maryland Population Research Center (MPRC)
The Maryland Population Research Center (MPRC) is a multidisciplinary center dedicated to population-related research and housed in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS) at the University of Maryland, College Park. Our primary goal is to draw together leading scholars from diverse disciplines to support, produce and promote population-related research of the highest scientific merit. The Center's research focuses on four key areas:

(1) social and economic inequality,

(2) gender, work, family and fertility,

(3) life course analyses of health and disability, and

(4) data development for population research.

The Center strives to develop young scholars and to encourage scholars from allied fields to engage in population-related research through research support, training and mentoring. The Center's proximity to Federal statistical agencies allows scholars access to under-utilized or restricted-use government data for their research. This university-government partnership allows Center faculty members to conduct innovative academic research while contributing to the improvement of data collection at the Federal statistical agencies, thereby enhancing the public infrastructure for population research. The Center's proximity to Washington, D.C. also strongly positions its faculty to provide non-partisan, scientific evidence on population-related issues of importance to policy makers.

For additional information, please visit the website:
http://www.popcenter.umd.edu

 

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