Professor Dean Yang will serve as the founding president of the International Development Economics Association (IDEA), the first global professional association dedicated to the field of development economics. IDEA is governed by a 15-member Board of Directors representing development economics research across six world regions. The Board, elected by the Founding Board, began its inaugural two-year term in April 2026.
Yang is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and Professor of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is also a Research Professor in the Population Studies Center at the Institute for Social Research.
An internationally recognized development economist, Yang's research focuses on microfinance, international migration, and the intersections of these fields. His work also spans health, disasters, international trade, and political economy. Methodologically, much of his work involves randomized controlled trials in field settings, but other work involves analysis of novel data sources. He is currently running survey work and field experiments among Filipino migrant workers and their families, and among rural microloan clients in Malawi. His past and current research locations include El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malawi, Mozambique, and the Philippines, as well as migrant populations of Filipinos in Italy, Indians in Qatar, and Salvadorans and Kenyans in the U.S.
Yang teaches undergraduate, master's, and doctoral courses in development economics and microeconomics. A native of the Philippines, he earned both his bachelor's degree and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
His appointment as IDEA's founding president recognizes his longstanding leadership and contributions to the global development economics community and marks an important milestone in advancing international collaboration and scholarship in the field.
