She earned her Ph.D. in Economics from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is most interested in interdisciplinary policy issues and has written on the political economy of environmental regulatory compliance as well as environmental justice. Her current projects include empirical inquiries on gender based preferences on improving environmental quality in India, determinants of voluntary use of renewable energy by Fortune 500 companies, and using active learning methods to incorporate publicly available economic data in principles of economics classes. Dr. Basu is further interested in the economics of climate change, particularly with respect to policies that promote sustainable energy use and economic growth.