Center for Economic Research in Pakistan-CERP

The Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) is a non-profit research center in Pakistan that promotes the use of rigorous quantitative research and actively engages with policy counterparts to answer key questions in public policy. CERP was founded in 2008 by renowned Pakistani economists based at the Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School, University of Chicago, Pomona College and Lahore University of Management Sciences. With its central offices in Lahore, CERP is incorporated as a non-profit organization under Section 42 of the Companies Ordinance, 1984.

CERP was established with the aim of filling the gap of evidence based policy planning in Pakistan. Despite substantial resources devoted to the development process, Pakistan suffers from a dearth of cutting-edge knowledge and expertise that can help design better policy and evaluate the success of countless development efforts that are being undertaken. As a result, policy makers often do not have the knowledge needed to identify policy missteps and this increases the likelihood of misusing limited resources. CERP’s founding members, who have a history of conducting rigorous and internationally recognized empirical research in Pakistan, decided to come together and form an organization that will focus specifically on generating such knowledge, disseminating it to inform policy, and partnering from the outset with policy actors to ensure theoretically and empirically informed policy design. CERP was also envisioned to act as a primary research networking resource for academics interested in Pakistan-related economic research and with idea generation, sharing research outputs, setting up new policy research projects, build critically needed local capacity and helping researchers partner with various stakeholders.