Thomas Pepinsky, assistant professor of government, and Eswar Prasad, the Nandlal P. Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy in the Department of Applied Economics and Management, have been selected through a competitive, nationwide process as two of 39 outstanding scholars of Asia to participate in the new National Asia Research Program (NARP) for a two-year term.

Cornell was the only institution with two faculty members chosen for this honor.

Both recipients were nominated by Cornell President David Skorton.

The NARP is a national research and conference program designed to reinvigorate and promote the policy-relevant study of Asia, and is a joint program of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

"Our goal in this new program is to highlight and reward scholars who have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy," said NBR president and NARP co-director Richard Ellings. "America's future security, prosperity and well-being will be deeply linked with Asia's future, and thus America needs some of its best and brightest to understand our interests in Asia -- and the history, nations, peoples and issues of Asia. In short the NARP is responding to the needs for information and assessment arising from the shift in locus in world power from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

As a NARP research fellow, Pepinsky, also the executive director of the International Political Economy Program and associate director of the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, will continue his current research on the political economy of financial development in Southeast Asia and democracy and political Islam in contemporary Indonesia.

"I hope that my research will help policymakers to have a better understanding of how financial markets work in Southeast Asia and also to think more clearly about the role of political Islam in contemporary Indonesian politics," Pepinsky said.

As a NARP associate, Prasad, who is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, will conduct research in two main areas: appropriate monetary policy frameworks and financial sector reforms and regulation in emerging market economies, with a special focus on China and India.

"Through my own research and through conferences and programs that I am initiating, I hope to catalyze work on these topical issues from the specific perspective of emerging market economies in Asia," Prasad said.