Professor Alain de Janvry is a world development economist.  He has done research in Latin American development including immigration, land reforms, agricultural development, and poverty.  His most recent paper deals with the potential benefits of biotechnology on reducing poverty and meeting growing food demand in the developing countries.  It focuses on the challenges of making biotechnology environmentally sustainable, affordable to poor farmers, and profitable for researchers.  Professor de Janvry gave five main ways his research questions are chosen:

1. From the Field.  Professor de Janvry develops questions from traveling to places, and seeing that things are not what economic theory would predict them to be.  He finds puzzles, where facts from the real world oppose what people think they know about the way the world works.  These puzzles beg the question ‘Why?’  Professor de Janvry believes the questions that come out of this curiosity can be made into relevant research topics.

2. Response to demand.  Governments and organizations often will ask a specific question to researchers in a particular field.  Professor de Janvry has embarked on many research projects this way, when someone outside comes to him with a question.  He mentions that important research questions have often been inspired by student questions from various classes.

3. Reading papers.  Professor de Janvry often finds that reading articles will inspire new questions or new insights that could be developed into research topics.

4. Examining available data.  Looking at surveys, census reports, and other data might often show inconsistencies or puzzles that inspire new research questions.

5. Thinking with an agenda.  For example, Professor de Janvry’s personal agenda of world development can make him see current events or approach data with a certain angle that will reveal interesting questions when others might not.
 
For the gathering of data, Professor de Janvry point out two main categories, primary and secondary sources.  While useful information can be found from information already gathered by other organizations, Professor de Janvry has done a lot of primary research.  This involves finding funding, dealing with governments, corporations, and organizations that are willing to sponsor a specific research projects, and then properly allocating resources.  Professor de Janvry has been involved in a wide range of projects from small surveys with a $35,000 budget, to Billion-dollar long-term studies.