Newly founded in 2015, the Institute for Economic and Social Research (IESR) at Jinan University aims to boost the internalization of the education and scientific research in the economic discipline and promote the High-Level University Construction Program of Guangdong Province. Dedicated to building a first-class research institute of applied economics in China, IESR conducts mass-scale social survey projects and world-class academic research; offers qualified graduate education, and cultivates top-level intellectuals. Professor Feng Shuaizhang, Yangtze River Scholar and winner of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young? Scholars, was appointed the first Dean of IESR.

IESR runs a Social Survey Center, which conducts multiple mass-scale social research projects; provides refined microdata to policy-making bodies, and informs relevant academic research. Based on data from the surveys, IESR will carry out research in relevant fields of applied economics, such as evolving labor economics, health economics, education economics, family economics, urban and regional economics, and resources and environmental economics. According to the results of data collection and academic research, IESR will conduct research on policy-making and provide top-level intellectual consulting services targeting front-burner national development issues.

Over the next five years, IESR plans to recruit 30 overseas PhDs and 10 domestic PhDs as full-time researchers, plus some part-time scholars with global influence. Using the models of top-ranking North American economics departments, IESR expects to offer first-rate graduate programs and cultivate outstanding talents with a global view of academic research, a deep understanding of national conditions and skills acquired through understanding modern economics to solve actual economic problems. IESR also initiates partnerships with dozens of domestic and international universities and research institutes in diverse forms as it transforms into a leading institute and academic center of applied economics, data survey center and wellknown think tanks.

IESR has built cooperative ties with the China Homeland Finance Survey and Research Center at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and is jointly conducting the 9th Survey of 2016 China Rural-Urban Migrants (RUMiC). In 2017, IESR will take over and lead RUMiC’s survey design and research.