[1] Multiple Socioeconomic Planning Secretaries and Directors-General of the National Economic and Development Authority have hailed from the school such as Gerardo Sicat, Solita Collas-Monsod, Cielito Habito, Dante Canlas, Emmanuel Esguerra, and Felipe Medalla.
Alongside its focus on economic studies, the department also offered the degree of Bachelor of Science in Commerce as a two-year course.
Three years later in 1929, the department was detached from the CLA upon the establishment of the School of Business Administration, which would be elevated into a college in 1934.
[5] Additional visiting professors such as Jeffrey G. Williamson and Leon Mears would offer their services to the department.
Foreign exchange programs to universities like Harvard, Columbia, and MIT would be funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
In the 80s, the school would establish the Health Economics Program (HEP) as a specialization for its graduate students.
The HEP offers electives specializing in health economics both at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
[11] In March 2020, in response to the implementation of the Enhanced Community Quarantine in Luzon to mitigate the Covid-19 Pandemic, Alfredo Paloyo of the University of Wollongong, and School of Economics faculty Cielo Magno, Karl Jandoc, Laarni Escresa, Maria Christina Epetia, Maria Socorro Bautista, and Emmanuel de Dios argued that the initial ₱27.1 billion fiscal stimulus packaged proposed by President Rodrigo Duterte was insufficient as the government should invest more to mitigate the effects of the community quarantine.
They specified that the government focus on programs such as distribution of cash and non-cash aid to the poor, moratorium on foreclosures and utility payments, extension of sick leaves, loans for small to medium businesses, mass testing, relaxation of tariffs and other barriers on PPE, takeovers of hotels and other accommodation services, financial support to farmers and other affected industries to increase hospital bed capacity, totaling ₱100 to 300 billion.
[14][15] They highlighted 6 key issues with the then-proposed legislation: In a forum held by the school in August 2023, Finance Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno detailed his position against the "unsustainable" Republic Act 10931 or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act of 2017 which mandated that all State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) in the country offer free tuition.
Diokno elaborated that in his experience as the Budget Secretary and former Bangko Sentral Governor, the law was "anti-poor" as more poor students didn't attend college.
He added that improvement of the basic education system should be prioritized over maintaining free college tuition to increase student's odds of gaining entry into SUCs.
To meet the interests of the school faculty and the needs of the government in policy making and planning, the ERC specializes in policy research in the areas of international trade and finance, fiscal management, income and poverty distribution, regional and rural development, resource and environmental economics, growth and development, economic theory, and econometrics.
Through the school faculty, the ERC works with institutions such as the World Bank, World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, Asian Development Bank, National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Trade and Industry.
Sicat's initial idea would be scrapped upon Encarnación's insistence that the faculty of the school be able to conduct their own research in their fields of interests.
However, the concept of an organization supporting the school was revived through Stephen R. Lewis, a consultant recruited by Sicat, who proposed the PCED, which functioned more as a foundation that the typical research institutes and centers of UP.