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The European Union Institute for Security Studies invites applications for its transatlantic postdoctoral fellowship for international relations and security. This enables candidates who have recently received their doctorate in social and political sciences or economics, and whose work focuses on international relations, peace or security issues, to spend three eight-month stays at participating research institutions or think tanks. At least one stay must be on the Eastern side of the Atlantic and one on the Western side. Each candidate must have successfully defended their PhD by 1 October 2014 and must either be a citizen or a resident of the US, Canada or Europe for at least two and a half years in the five years before the application deadline.
Funding provides a monthly stipend of €1,800, a monthly health insurance allowance of €200 and a one-time travel allowance of €3,500 for travel to and from the host institutions.
“Institutional and Structural Determinants of Investment Worldwide”
by Jamus Jerome Lim
Abstract
This paper considers institutional and structural factors associated with investment activity in a panel of up to 129 developed and developing countries. It introduces these factors to a standard neoclassical investment function for open economies, and find that financial development and institutional quality are reasonably robust determinants of cross-country capital formation, with latter displaying more stability in the sign and significance of its coefficient. Indeed, when endogeneity concerns are addressed more explicitly using external instruments, and both interactions and subsamples are considered, institutional quality tends to survive as the causal determinant of investment.
Keywords: Investment, fi nancial development, institutional quality.
“Does Investment Spur Growth Everywhere? Not Where Institutions Are Weak”
by Thibaut Dort, Pierre-Guillaume Méon and Khalid Sekkat
Abstract
We investigate the impact of investment on growth in a sample of developed and developing countries, conditioning the marginal effect of investment on institutional quality. The panel structure of our dataset allows controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and dealing with the risk of endogeneity bias. In line with our expectations, we find that investment increases growth more in countries with high institutional quality than in countries with defective institutions. The results are essentially driven by government instability, corruption, and the rule of law.
The Sasakawa Peace Foundation invites applications for its grants. These offer support for projects addressing problems in the fields of international understanding, exchange, and cooperation. Priority areas are:
•efforts to ensure peace and security in the international community, including peace building and security issues, and non-traditional security issues;
•addressing positive and negative aspects of globalisation, including market and disparities issues, issues involving demographic changes and population movement, and issues at the interface between science and technology and society;
•promotion of mutual understanding between priority regions and Japan, including an exchange programme between Japan and US.
The foundation also has the following special funds: Pacific island nations fund; Japan-China friendship fund; Pan-Asia fund; Middle East Islam fund.
Non-profit organisations and voluntary organisations are eligible to apply for grants. Grants will not be awarded for purely theoretical research, to businesses, or to individuals. There is no upper limit for grants amount, but most awards have previously fallen between US$20,000 and US$100,000 over one to three years.
Click here for the original funding call and further details
The European University Institute, through the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, invites applications for the global governance fellowships. These allow postdoctoral research for one to two academic years. Preference is given to proposals within the following domains:
•climate governance;
•cultural pluralism;
•development;
•global economics;
•international trade observatory;
•modes of global governance.
Up to 10 fellowships are available each year, two of which are awarded to candidates working on European comparative politics or European comparative history as Vincent Wright fellowships. Fellows work on a selected topic and are expected to participate actively in the research activities of the Centre. The research done during the fellowship should lead to publication. Fellowships are open to candidates who defended their PhD no more than seven years before 31 July of the year of application. There are no restrictions on nationality. The fellowship carries a monthly stipend of €2,000, plus up to €300 per month if the fellow has a cohabiting partner and €200 per month for each dependent child. Fellows, but not their families, receive one return trip from their home town to Florence, worth up to €1,200 for return travel.
The International Growth Centre at the London School of Economics (IGC) invites researchers to submit proposals for high-calibre research projects relevant to growth policies in developing countries. The deadline is 11:59pm GMT, 30th November 2013.
The IGC is building on previous work and streamlining its research with a sharper focus on key research questions that are relevant for growth within the following four broad themes, where we have also received great interest from policymakers: (i) state effectiveness, (ii) firm capabilities, (iii) cities, and (iv) energy.
Please note that two of the attached documents provide further information on the IGC’s specific research and country areas of focus – ‘IGC Research Priorities’ provides further details of the priority areas within these four themes, while ‘IGC Countries Priorities’ highlights areas of policymaker demand and research opportunities in IGC’s partner countries (currently Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India – Central and Bihar – Liberia, Myanmar, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia). Included in this call is a special Call for Liberia and Sierra Leone. Please see the attached document ‘IGC Liberia and Sierra Leone Call’.
Please submit all central proposals (i.e. not including those for the special Call for Sierra Leone and Liberia) using the ‘IGC Proposal Form’ (recently revised and attached here). These proposals should be submitted to the Research Programme Committee at with the following subject line: “Research theme (one of the four mentioned above), Project Title”. The final date for receiving research proposals is 11:59pm GMT, 30th November 2013. Funding decisions will be taken by a Commissioning Board by the end of January 2014. Researchers will be notified of the Boards’ decisions soon after this date, and we expect contracts to be finalized shortly thereafter. Please note that further opportunities to respond to calls for proposals will follow in 2014.
Please also find attached a set of guidelines – ‘IGC Notes for Applicants’ – which will be useful to researchers when drafting proposals for this funding round. The standard terms and conditions, which will form a part of conditions for a successful research award, are also attached (as ‘IGC Terms & Conditions’). Among other issues, this document covers how the IGC will treat requests for Principal Investigator remuneration, and also our procedures and requirements regarding institutional overheads.
The IGC will assess the submitted proposals against the following criteria, which are further discussed in the ‘IGC Notes for Applicants’ (although these are applicable for all IGC projects, special provisions may be in place for individual country calls):
(i) The extent to which the proposed research is innovative and contributes to substantive creation of knowledge, specifically helping to expand and strengthen the existing relevant literature on growth and development.
(ii) Whether and how the proposed research can be used to inform better and more evidence-based policymaking in developing countries.
(iii) The makeup of the research teams and contribution to local capacity.
(iv) Value for money.
This call for proposals encompasses both IGC Research and Country Programmes. While these two do overlap substantially in their remits, their focuses do differ to some extent. While there is some preference for proposals that respond to policy demands in the IGC’s partner countries, the IGC will continue to support frontier research proposals which have policy implications for growth in all developing countries. While funding decisions will be made centrally, projects can be sponsored under the umbrella of either the Country or the Research Programme, or potentially jointly.
Note: several IGC countries have recently issued separate calls for proposals. Applicants who submitted proposals under those country calls cannot resubmit them for consideration here.
Given the number of proposals expected, we are unlikely to be able to respond to individual enquiries regarding the submission process and commissioning processes. However, we will be updating the ‘IGC Call for Proposals FAQ’ regularly, to ensure all commonly raised queries are addressed.
The Department for International Development (DFID a department of the UK government) invites tenders to establish a centre of excellence on impact evaluation of international development.
The centre will provide a range of services which will develop and strengthen the evidence base for what works and what does not work in international development, as well as developing and strengthening evaluation research capacity within the UK and internationally.
The contracted organisation will need to establish and maintain a high quality centre with strong management structures and commitment to cross-institutional working.
DFID will contribute up to £20 million in core funding over a period of five years. This will represent 80 per cent of income in the first three years, reducing to around 50 per cent in years four and five.
We would like to welcome the following new members of the InsTED network
Ahmad Lashkaripour (Penn State University) His research interests are in international trade, and industrial organization.
Prof Andrei Levchenko (University of Michigan) His research to date studies the interplay between international trade and economic institutions, the impact of trade on macroeconomic fluctuations, and the consequences of financial integration for growth, volatility, and risk-sharing.
Prof Anna Maria Mayda (Georgetown University) Her research interests are in international trade, political economy, and international migration.
DFID, the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC) and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MofCom) wish to explore the potential for working together to enhance the trade performance of African countries, and its development impact. They have agreed to jointly conduct a country-specific study on the potential and challenges of African trade relations with China and the UK. The first set of studies will focus on 4 countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. The findings of the research will provide a basis for discussions about how the UK and China can most usefully collaborate on this issue.
As part of this joint assessment, DFID wishes to engage a service provider (SP) over a period of 1 year to conduct a research study to assess how trade, and trade-related cooperation with China and the UK can most effectively support growth, structural transformation and poverty reduction in Kenya and South Africa. In addition, the SP will be required to liaise closely with a Chinese research team under CAITEC carrying out equivalent work on Nigeria and Ethiopia, sharing information on methodologies and data sources as appropriate.
The SP will be responsible for: formulating and agreeing with CAITEC a methodology and workplan for the research; conducting the research in Kenya and South Africa; maintaining close contact with the CAITEC-led research on Nigeria and Ethiopia; and packaging and presenting the analysis and recommendations to key policy makers and practitioners representing the UK, China and the African countries.
For the purposes of this call, applicants can be an individual organisation or a consortium of organisations applying through 1 lead organisation. Applicants will need to demonstrate capability and experience in (i) delivering high quality analysis of trade and trade policy issues; (ii) managing and conducting stakeholder consultations including with the private sector as well as policymakers and government entities; (iii) getting research into use, i.e. delivering and effectively communicating well-grounded policy advice so as to achieve impact. They will also need to demonstrate how they will work with CAITEC in order to ensure coherence and quality across the overall research programme.
The contract will be issued for 1 year. The successful SP will be chosen based on technical and commercial proposals for implementation, as described in the terms of reference. (PDF, 48.5KB, 9 pages)
Potential applicants will be invited to fill in a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) which will include 4 technical questions covering experience, approach and process. Up to 5 applicants will be shortlisted and invited to submit full proposals at the invitation to tender (ITT).
The Lucas Paradox draws attention to the fact that capital should flow from rich to poor countries, but that on average the flow is in the other direction. Lucas’ original (1990) illustration of this phenomenon was couched in terms of a neoclassical model in which two identical countries produce identical goods from a common constant returns to scale production technology. With all else equal, differences in income per capita reflect differences in capital per capita. Incomes are lower in the country where capital is more scarce, and returns to capital there are higher to reflect this scarcity. If capital is allowed to flow freely between the two countries, then the higher returns in the poorer country should bring about a net capital inflow. So why do we not tend to observe this in the data? The theoretical literature has identified two main reasons. The first is due to differences in features of the economy that affect production, including differences in technology, differences in the availability of human capital, differences in the stability of government and differences in the quality of underlying institutions. The second is due to differences in the functioning of capital markets; even though the expected returns to capital in a given country may be high, a high level of uncertainty associated with the returns may dissuade capital from flowing there. Recent empirical work has begun to substantiate these theoretical explanations.
