Newsletter

STEG Newsletter - November 2021

10 November 2021

Dear All,

Much has been happening at STEG recently and there is even more coming up in the next few weeks. Make sure you don't miss any of it!

Three new funding calls are now open: Third Small Research Grants Call, Second PhD Research Grants Call and Second Ideas for Transformation Call. We welcome applications from all researchers working on structural transformation.

STEG is hosting its second Annual Conference 19 to 21 January 2022. The call for papers to present is now open. Find out more about the conference and how to apply below. Submit your paper before 22 November.

STEG is welcoming Professor Diego Restuccia (University of Toronto) to present as a special lecture From Micro to Macro: Land Institutions, Agricultural Productivity, and Structural Transformation on 2 December. Register below!

Last chance to apply for the fellowship at the African Center for Economic Transformation! Find out more about this great opportunity below. Apply before 12 November.

Our Second Small Research Grants Call, First PhD Research Grants Call and First Ideas for Transformation Call are currently under evaluation with final decisions on all proposals to be returned before the end of the year. The First Larger Research Grants Call will have decisions returned latest in the New Year.

Make sure to get the all the dates for upcoming calls and events in your calendar!

Best,

The STEG Team

New Funding Calls

STEG is inviting applications to the Third Small Research Grants Call, Second PhD Research Grants Call and Second Ideas for Transformation Call.

Small Research Grants (SRGs) of between £10,000 and £25,000 are our primary research funding vehicle. While PhD students are eligible to apply to the SRG funding call, we are also issuing a call exclusively for PhD students in order to encourage broader participation in the programme. PhD Research Grants are available up to £15,000.

Ideas for Transformation (I4Ts) are brief and largely non-technical essays (about 15 pages, double-spaced) utilising country-specific expertise to identify a specific policy distortion, market failure, or other similar opportunity to promote inclusive growth and development in a particular country or context. Funding of £1,000 is granted to successful applicants.

Find more information on these grants through the STEG website.

STEG Annual Conference 2022

Save the date for our second Annual Conference from Wednesday 19 to Friday 21 January 2022. To ensure that everyone can attend, this will be a virtual event as with the STEG Annual Conference 2021.

The conference will feature keynote talks from distinguished academics in the field, presentations from ongoing projects, including those funded by STEG in our recent call rounds, and presentations of some of the most recent research papers related to structural transformation. Through the conference, we hope to highlight the diversity of research in the field and offer more opportunities for early-career researchers and scholars representing a wide range of institutions and geographies.

Further details on the conference structure and how to apply to present your paper are available on the STEG website.

Special Lecture from Diego Restuccia

STEG is hosting its second special lecture as part of its research initiative to better understand structural change, productivity, and growth in low- and middle-income countries.

This year, STEG welcomes Professor Diego Restuccia (University of Toronto) to present From Micro to Macro: Land Institutions, Agricultural Productivity, and Structural Transformation.

Abstract

I study the aggregate and distributional implications of restrictive land-market institutions that are prevalent in poor and developing countries. First, I broadly review the evidence of misallocation in agriculture and its connection with land institutions. Second, I develop a two-sector general equilibrium model of agriculture and non-agriculture within a local economy where individuals are heterogeneous in their sectoral ability, endowed with an amount of land in agriculture, and face distorted land markets. I calibrate a benchmark distorted economy to micro and sectoral data from Ethiopia and study the effect of a land rental-market reform that facilitates land reallocation. The land reform directly increases measured agricultural TFP by 26 percent due to reduced misallocation, but agricultural labor productivity increases substantially by 285 percent due to improved selection of occupational choices and a strong acceleration of the process of structural transformation. The land rental-market reform also attains a substantial reduction in poverty and rural income inequality in the medium term. Third, I discuss the implications of these results for policy considerations.

ACET Fellowship

The African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) is currently recruiting a Fellow in partnership with STEG.

The role will include undertaking high quality research on structural change, publishing research papers in leading economic journals, and producing briefs highlighting specific transformative policy and strategies for developing countries.

The Fellow will be responsible for work on specific research topics identified by ACET senior staff. They will also be required to support ACET’s research by collaborating/partnering with networks of experts and think-tanks in Africa and elsewhere working on growth and transformation issues.

To find out more details on the opportunity and how to apply, please refer to the job page on the ACET website. The deadline to apply is Friday, 12 November 2021. Interested applicants should email their CV and an accompanying cover letter to [email protected].