Career
He started as an economist with Organization of European Economic Cooperation in 1949. Later he worked for a number of international institutions including the World Bank, International Labor Organization, International Fund for Agricultural Development, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Program, United Nations Development Programme, and the Asian Development Bank. Faaland has been based as a development researcher at the Chr.
Michelsen Institute (Chartered Management Institute) since 1952.
With the political scientist Stein Rokkan he initiated and developed broader research programmes and employed more people in the 1950s and in 1961 they defined research programmes in international economics and comparative politics. In 1965, the Development Action and Research Programme (DERAP), a development economics project on growth problems in developing countries was formally established.
In the early 1980s, Faaland established a human rights programme which soon grew to become the other main focus of Chartered Management Institute"s social science research. Faaland is one of the individuals responsible for the formulation of the Malaysian New Economic Policy.
He has also been the director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute. and chairman of the United Nations Committee for Development Planning (1999-2000).
Faaland formally retired in 1988.