The Research Institute for Economic Development was established in 1972 as an inter-faculty research unit. At the very outset its mission consisted in integrating various research projects: theoretical, cognitive, methodological and empirical, carried out by faculty members of SGH.
Since 1992 the Institute has been incorporated into the Collegium of Economic Analysis.
Nowadays RIED's research activity focuses on business cycles and economic tendency surveys. The Institute is also involved in systematic research on synthetic indicators of economic activity level: concurrent and leading indicators for the whole economy.