Is there any funding opportunity for researchers based in low and middle-income countries?

Yes! The Structural Transformation and Economic Growth (STEG) is inviting applications for the first round of STEG Ideas for Transformation to fund cutting-edge research that can be published in leading academic journals while simultaneously informing policy dialogue in low- and middle-income countries.

STEG focuses on the broad area of structural transformation and economic growth in low- and middle-income countries. STEG supports research that promises to produce credible results that will be useful for policymaking.

This particular call is for new Ideas for Transformation (I4T). These will be brief and largely non-technical essays utilizing 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.

The idea would be to identify potential case studies that warrant further research. These might be specific and well-documented examples of a market failure or a policy problem – but ideally the cases should have broad relevance. For instance, an example of a local problem or issue will be more compelling if it can be taken as ‘typical’ of some broader set of cases.

STEG is interested in proposals for I4T studies that will do each of the following:

• Use simple methods (suggestive empirics or narratives) to demonstrate the existence, relevance, and importance of a policy issue involving structural transformation.
• Suggest interesting candidate issues for high-level economic analysis or modelling using the tools of macro development. They hope for these essays to inspire further research (possibly collaborative, linking the authors of I4T submissions with other researchers or teams) that further evaluates the significance of the problem or opportunity that could assist in building the case for the proposed policy response.
• Specific case studies need not be at large scale, but the proposal should explain how the proposed topic might be contribute to effects at the macro scale. For instance, an essay might describe and quantify the impact of poor transport connections on a particular rural area of an African country. Perhaps transport problems lead farmers to produce low-value non-perishable crops rather than higher value crops that are highly perishable.

The deadline for submitting the applications is 01-Sep-21.

For funding information and eligibility criteria, please visit here.