CHENNAI: The Chennai-based Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) on Friday announced the launch of its "distinguished fellowship" programme and named Harvard University's Professor of Economics Dr. Sendhil Mullainathan its first distinguished fellow.

Dr. Mullainathan will develop course structure and contents in subjects of behavioural and development finance at both master's and doctoral levels for the Institute.

Research programmes

He will also carry out research programmes with the IFMR faculty and research associates, IFMR dean (academic) R. Chandrasekar told a press conference here.

"We are looking at developing subjects such as micro-finance and rural finance as electives for our students in the near future. There have not been any academic programmes in the country offering the subjects in an analytical way," he added.

IFMR director R. Kannan said: "The distinguished fellowship programme is an initiative to foster research and academic collaborations with faculty who have excelled in chosen fields."

Dr. Mullainathan said much of the research would take into account the social impact of financing in rural and developing areas.

He was already involved in some projects relating to rural finance through tie-ups with corporates like EID-Parry and ICICI.

One of the ongoing projects was developing a loan package for sugarcane farmers.

He explained that through research, they identified that the farmers were borrowing through the year at exorbitant interest, as it was a 12-month crop.

The loan package suggested better debt management whereby the farmers were able to pay lower interest.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail