This conference is organized by the Department of Economics and the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CSAMES) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) to bring together scholars who are engaged in state-of-the-art research on the economy of Iran. The purpose is to enable the leading economists interested in Iran to exchange views on their current research and the key topics for further study. UIUC is in a unique position as the venue for the conference due to its history of academic interactions with Iran, the strength of its faculty in research on the Iranian economy, and its major contribution to the training of Iranian economists.

The conference is scheduled to take place at UIUC on December 11-13, 2008. It is expected to result in a seminal volume of research on Iran's economy and to stimulate further advanced work in the future. Indeed, another conference entitled "Iranian Economy at a Crossroads: Domestic and Global Challenges" has been planned at the University of Southern California for September 18-19, 2009. For more information on that conference, please visit its website:

 http://college.usc.edu/conferences/iran/