Following its split in 1968 to form the Dutch-speaking Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the French-speaking Université catholique de Louvain, CORE moved to Louvain-la-Neuve in 1977 to join the latter.
CORE, the creation of which was inspired by the Cowles Foundation as well as the other institutions that Jacques Drèze had visited during his research work in the United States, brought economic modelling to Europe.
In 1967, CORE received a five-year grant from the Ford Foundation, which propelled the center into rapid development by attracting faculty members and visitors.
These researchers including Gérard Debreu, Truman Bewley, Hildegard Dierker, Birgit Grodal, David Schmeidler, Karl Vind and Werner Hildenbrand gained CORE international recognition in the field of mathematical economics.
After the division of the disciplines, disequilibrium economics became the major and most influential research area at CORE differentiating the center from the US practices and establishing it as a specific school in macroeconomics.
With the disciplines becoming more and more differentiated, mathematical programming and econometrics, initially minor fields, also developed and became important research areas at CORE.
In 1977, CORE expanded into training activities by the creation of the European Doctoral Program in Quantitative Economics, later joined by the other partners.
In addition to the longer stays, CORE regularly receives faculty and researchers coming on short visits from a few days to a few weeks.
Econometrics research at CORE is aimed at the development of quantitative models as well as statistical and computational methods applied to treating economic data.
Operations research is closely connected with economic geography through the use of mathematical programming methods in solving location decision problems.
Research in geography at CORE is closely connected with economics, e.g. the joint study of the location of human activities and their environmental footprint.
CORE members regularly attend external seminars, conferences and meetings, most often to present a paper, and are invited to other institutions for academic stays and visits.
Among the renowned researchers having contributed to the work of CORE through visits, publications and participation in seminars and conferences are, the list being non-exhaustive: Kenneth Arrow, Robert Aumann, Claude d'Aspremont, Gérard Debreu, Marc Fleurbaey, John Geanakoplos, Victor Ginsburgh, Michel Goemans, Christian Gouriéroux, Patrick Harker, Werner Hildenbrand, Matthew Jackson, Thomas Magnanti, François Maniquet [fr], Eric Maskin, Franco Modigliani, Roger Myerson, George Nemhauser, Arkadi Nemirovski, Yurii Nesterov, Ariel Rubinstein, Thomas Sargent, Reinhard Selten, Lloyd Shapley, Joseph Stiglitz, Jacques-François Thisse, Jean Tirole and Laurence Wolsey.