BEA is a premier institution established in the year 1981.The founder president was Prof. Dr. Satyendra Nath Sen (1981-83). In the residence of Dr. Sen, Founder members started the preparation for the first Annual Conference of the BEA to be held in the early month of 1981. Mrs. Alakananda Patel, wife of Dr. I.G. Patel, the then Governor of Reserve Bank of India, was a student of the founder Secretary. She assured that she will bring Dr. Patel to this conference as the Inaugurator which she ultimately did and this gave the BEA a beginning with a bang. BEA Presidents till now includes Satyendra Nath Sen, Dhiresh Chandra Bhattacharya, Alak Ghosh, Majula Bose, Amalesh Chandra Banerjee, Biswajit Chatterjee, Biswajit Guha, Asim K. Karmakar during this period of more than four decades of its existence. From the very beginning BEA planned to publish its journal Artha Sastra (Annual for first years and bi- annual for next 6 years.) and then Artha Beekshan (quarterly). For the first issue, members tried to get a message from Dr. S. N. Sen but as ill luck would have it, He passed away in 1983 and BEA had to publish this journal as Dr. S.N Sen Memorial Lecture Volume. Besides its journal, the BEA has published as many as 40 books and six are forthcoming. On the occasion of its Silver Jubilee Celebration in 2005 it published a collection of BEA Presidential Addresses. It instituted almost from the beginning Annual S.N. Memorial Lecture. The lecture was delivered by eminent economists like Rakhal Datta (1998), Dipankar Coondoo (2012), Soumyen Sikdar (2013) etc.

Since 2007, it started Annual Prof. A.K. Dasgupta Lecture where eminent personalities like Andre Beteille, D. M. Nachane, Sir Partha Dasgupta, Biswajit Chatterjee, Tapan Raychoudhuri etc., delivered this lecture so far. In 2013 Asis Dagupta Memorial Lecture was delivered by Prof. Raj Kumar Sen on the Epochs in the Indian Economy since independence: an Analysis. However, in 2017 BEA has instituted for the first time Giribala Karmakar Memorial Lecture series in Economics to be delivered in every Annual Conference of the Parishad by eminent economists. So far 8 lectures are delivered by eminent economists of world repute viz., Sebak Kumar Jana, Sidharta Mitra, Basabi Bhattachaya, Madhusudhan Datta, Biswajit Chatterjee, Saibal Kar, Malabika Roy, and Prabirjit Sarkar. A book on Leading Issues in India’s Economy: Giribala Karmakar Memorial Lecture Series in Economis-1 edited by Sm. Giribala’s son, Asim K. Karmakar has been published from a reputed publisher. Giribala’s son, is now the present President of BEA (2024-2027)