Newsletter

STEG Newsletter - December 2021

Dear All,

As we approach the end of another challenging year, we hope you remain well and would like to wish you the best for the year ahead. There is a lot taking place early in 2022 for STEG. Make sure not to miss out on any of it!

Two funding calls are currently receiving applications: the Third Small Research Grants Call and the Second PhD Research Grants 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 closed. Registration will open in the New Year.

BREAD and IGC are hosting a virtual PhD course between late January and early May 2022 with modules on education; credit, insurance, and risk; and migration. Find out more and register below!

STEG welcomed Professor Diego Restuccia (University of Toronto) to present the 2021 special lectureFrom Micro to Macro: Land Institutions, Agricultural Productivity, and Structural Transformation on 2 December. Find the recorded presentation and slides below.

Our Second Ideas for Transformation Call is currently under evaluation with final decisions on all proposals to be returned by February. Decisions have been returned on the Second Small Research Grants Call, First PhD Research Grants Call, and First Larger Research Grants Call.

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 and Second PhD Research Grants 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.

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 by Laura Alfaro (Professor, Harvard Business School) and Louis Kasende (Deputy Governor, Bank of Uganda) and presentations of some of the most exciting recent research papers related to structural transformation and growth. 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.

Application to present at the conference is now closed. Final decisions on the selected papers to be presented at the conference have been returned. Details on how to register to attend the conference will be released in early January.

Further details on the conference structure are available on the STEG website.


BREAD-IGC Virtual PhD Course

The Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), in collaboration with the International Growth Centre (IGC), is offering a virtual PhD non-credit course for the spring of 2022. This semester-long course will cover three modules of 5-10 lectures: education; credit, insurance, and risk; and migration. Future courses will cover other topics in development economics.

The course is open and free of charge to all interested PhD students and economics faculty worldwide. Course materials (syllabus, lecture presentations, and recorded lectures) will be available after the end of each module on the IGC website.

Dates/time: The course will run from 27 January-5 May 2022, with either one or two lectures a week on Thursday and/or Friday. Lecture time will always be 10:00-11:30 am EDT / 3:00-4:30 pm London time (GMT through March dates, and then GMT+1 for April and May dates).

Registration: To register for the full course, please fill out the registration form by 20 January 2022. Further details can be found on the IGC webpage.


Special Lecture from Diego Restuccia

STEG hosted its second special lecture on 2 December as part of its research initiative to better understand structural change, productivity, and growth in low- and middle-income countries.

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

The recording of the lecture is available here with the accomapnying slides available here.


New Projects: SRG 2 and PhD 1

Funding decisions have been made on the Second Small Research Grants Call and the First PhD Research Grants Call. The level of competition for funding remained very high in these rounds with 25 projects funded from 150 applications. Full summaries of the latest projects will be available on the STEG website in the New Year but brief details can be found below.

Small Research Grants:

  • George Alessandria – A Multi-Industry Model of Trade Adjustment Dynamics and Integration in Colombia
  • Homagni Choudhury and Deb Kusum Das – Drivers of the Spatial Pattern of Manufacturing Productivity in India: Trade Policy Reforms Combined with Place-specific Policies or Trade Costs?
  • Felipe Brugués and Rebecca De Simone – Bank Transaction Taxes, Market Power and Credit Allocation: Evidence from Ecuador
  • Abiodun Egbetokun – Origins of the Mammoth: Emergence and Evolution of Large High-growth Firms in Nigeria
  • Torsten Figueiredo Walter and Niclas Moneke – On the Quality of National Statistics across Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Juan Sebastian Galan – The State and Industrial Transformation in Colombia
  • Jiajia Gu, Rachel Ngai, and Jin Wang – Barriers to Structural Transformation and the Decline in Female Employment in Early Development (China)
  • Clement Imbert – Environmental Change and Internal Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Luisa Cefala, Supreet Kaur, and Heather Schofield – Promoting Regular Labour Supply among the Urban Poor (India)
  • Michael Callen, Stefano Fiorin, and Rohini Pande – Political Social Networks and Women's Political Representation (Nepal)
  • Thomas Gautier and Gianluca Russo – How to Foster Growth in Post-Conflict Settings? Evidence from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Post-Apartheid South Africa
  • Ariane Salem and Awa Ambra Seck – Emigration, a Blessing or a Curse: Evidence from Francophone Africa (Morocco, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali)
  • Ethan Ligon and Jedediah Silver – Measuring Farm Household Non-separability (Nigeria)
  • Michael Sposi and Jing Zhang – Cross-Country Differences in Sectoral Output, Employment, and Income
  • Gideon Ndubuisi and Kasper Vrolijk – Trade Exposure, Market Concentration and Social Cohesion: Evidence from Uganda

PhD Research Grants:

  • Maria Constanza Abuin, Anhua Chen, and Federico Huneeus – Two-sided Market Power in Buyer-supplier Networks: Evidence from Chilean Transaction Data
  • Iacopo Bianchi and Dominik Biesalski – Clustering at the Business Level: Competitive Forces and Micro-Firm Markets (Uganda)
  • Edward Davenport and Tishara Garg – Tax Dispersion and the Spatial Allocation of Economic Activity (India)
  • Davide Marco Difino – Demographic Trends as Drivers of Structural Transformation (cross-country)
  • Andrew Bernard, Arnaud Dyevre, and John Spray – Production Network Growth and Resilience: Evidence from Rwanda and Uganda
  • Stepan Gordeev – Nutrition Demand, Subsistence Farming, and Agricultural Productivity (Malawi)
  • David Henning – The Economic Impact of Audits (Uganda)
  • Erik Katovich – Can Natural Resources Promote Industrialisation? Firms, Competition, and Spillovers from an Industrial Policy (Brazil)
  • Alexander Copestake, Ashley Pople, and Katherine Stapleton – AI, Firms and Wages: Evidence from India
  • Shresth Garg and Sagar Saxena – Phasing Out Fertiliser Subsidies in India

Important Dates

Calls under Evaluation

Second Ideas for Transformation Call - decisions expected by mid-February

Open Calls

Third Small Research Grants Call - closes 9 January

Second PhD Research Grants Call - closes 9 January

Opening Soon

No further calls are opening before the end of the year. Find a provisional call timeline for future calls here.

Upcoming Events

Annual Conference 2022 - 19-21 January 2022

Related content

STEG Project Policy Brief

Paternalistic Discrimination

Nina Buchmann, Carl Meyer, Colin D. Sullivan • Research Theme 0: Data, Measurement, and Conceptual Framing
STEG Working Paper Series

Paternalistic Discrimination

Nina Buchmann, Carl Meyer, Colin D. Sullivan • Research Theme 1: Firms, Frictions and Spillovers, and Industrial Policy