Initiative for Economic Policy (IEP) | Columbia Business School

The Initiative for Economic Policy, sponsored by the economics department at Columbia Business School was formed at the end of 2019. Its goals include:

• Bringing engaging discussions and debate on economic policy topics to the Columbia campus to help ensure students are exposed to the policy backdrop against which commerce occurs.

• Creating an enriching experience for Columbia Business School students, alumni, and other community members.

• Ensuring that the cutting-edge economic research of scholars at Columbia and elsewhere becomes more widely known, including among a non-academic audience.

• Establishing Columbia Business School as a premier location for the study and discussion of the ways business and economic policy intersect.

While I.E.P. events feature some of the leading scholars in economics and related disciplines, they are intended to be vivid, engaging discussions that are accessible to informed, non-specialist audiences. Some events will be organized as debates—two or more panelists with diametric opposite views engaged in spirited disagreement. Others will have a more explanatory bent, with panelists with overlapping expertise discussing the nuances of some urgent economic policy issue of our time.