IEG's research falls into nine broad themes: Agriculture and rural development, environment and resource economics; globalization and trade; industry, labour and welfare; macro-economic policy and modeling; population and development; health policy; and social change and social structure.

The Institute's faculty members also supervise doctoral students from India and abroad, provide regular policy inputs, and engage with government, civil society and international organisations.

Over the years IEG has hosted many international scholars, including Nobel Laureates Elinor Ostrom and Amartya Sen, and others such as Ronald Dore, Yujiro Hayami, Jan Breman and Nicolas Stern.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has had a long association with the Institute, initially as Chairman of the Board (1972-1982) and as President (1992-2021) of the IEG Society.

It also conducts talks, dissertations and seminars and has hosted scholars such as Nobel Laureates Elinor Ostrom and Amartya Sen, Ronald Dore, Yujiro Hayami,[2] Jan Breman and Nicolas Stern.

The campus also accommodates a fitness centre, outdoor and indoor recreational facilities, seminar hall, children's park and play area for kids.

IEG maintains a library, stocked with 1,31,000 accessioned documents such as books, monographs, workshop papers, proceedings of conferences, statistical documents in the fields of economics, economic development, energy, environment, finance, econometrics, mathematics, agriculture, forestry, industry, irrigation, sociology, social anthropology, gender, demography and health.

The studies revolve around the pattern of growth in agriculture, its sources, determinants and implications in the society and the non farm employment in rural and urban India.

Research activities on non-renewable resources such as coal, iron ore, petroleum and oil, irrigation and water management, solar, biogas and renewable energy technologies have gained momentum at the institute.

Small scale industries, petroleum, cotton and jute textiles, pricing policy for cement, sugar and cotton, location of sugar and fertilizer factories, and wages and productivity in major industries have all been taken up for advanced research and resultant studies have been made available to policy makers during the past years.

The researches are supported by the Development Planning Centre (DPC) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Endowment Unit.

The studies undertaken under this theme are related to qualitative and quantitative evaluation of population and the development of demographic techniques for the estimation of births, deaths, contraception, couple protection and women's issues.

The main areas of research are: Contributions to Indian Sociology, a journal, is based at IEG and is published in association with SAGE Publications.

Later, Ford Foundation provided an endowment grant to IEG for creating a Professorial Chair in Environmental and Resource Economics.

It was established in 1998 and strives to carry out research on: The activities of the unit are funded by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare; World Bank, WHO, UNAIDS, UNDP, DFID, AUSAID, SIDA, the Population Council, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), Center for Global Development (CGD), Centre for Chronic Disease Control and Ford Foundation.

Presently, the unit is involved in projects under two major themes; Information Technology (IT) Software and Hardware and Role of Knowledge Sharing in the Globalization of Indian Enterprises.