"This is an exciting year to visit the Department of Economic Sciences at IIT Kanpur. Economics was part of a larger social sciences cluster, and only recently gained an independent departmental identity. There is a sense among the faculty and students that something exciting is happening; they are correct. Under the leadership of the highly regarded optimization theorist, Professor Joydeep Dutta, there is an obvious and unabashed drive to build excellence across the board. I had the opportunity to deliver three seminars. These were well attended and generated lively and informed discussions. In addition, Professor Dutta and Professor Deep Mukherjee escorted me on two memorable and informative visits into the countryside to see a slice of rural India that many foreigners never witness. These half-day trips were highlights of my time in India".

"Yours is a young and vibrant department with genuine intellectual curiosity among the (mostly young) faculty and the graduate students. I am sure that Professor Deep Mukherjee (another of my students from UCONN) has been quite successful in passing on his own interest in neoclassical production economics to his students. Although I did not get much time to interact with the general faculty specializing in other areas in Economics about their research, I feel quite optimistic that in the near future your department will be recognized as one of the major centers for Economics research, possibly catching up with Delhi School of Economics and IGIDR! During my stay at IITK I offered a faculty seminar on Economic Measures of Capacity Utilization, taught two classes (one on Directional Distance Functions and another on Bootstrapping for DEA), attended presentations of research in progress by a number of graduate students, and attended the seminar presentation by Professor Sushama Murty of JNU. The packed program was intellectually elevating and physically exhausting (just the way I enjoy it!)."