Funding Opportunities

Research Development Grants RFP
Food Assistance Research

The Harris School announces its Research Development Grants program for social science scholars interested in food assistance research.

Download the RIDGE brochure:
"Strengthening Our Nation's Food Assistance Programs" (PDF)

Grants will be awarded in amounts up to $40,000 for the 2008-2009 program. Start-up projects and projects by young and less experienced scholars will be offered grants of up to $20,000. Awards will be made to scholars who propose research including, but not limited to:

Food Assistance Research

• Interactions between food assistance programs and other welfare programs with respect to participation, administration, budget exposure, and the role of food assistance as a personal and fiscal stabilizer
• The effects of the macroeconomic environment on the need for food assistance, level of participation, and food assistance program costs
• The well-being of current and former food assistance recipients

Organizational Structure, Incentives and Performance

Economists have long recognized the importance of organizational structure, but previous work has typically developed theories for commercial for-profit firms. Yet, as the literature in fiscal federalism recognizes, some of the same issues involving centralization vs. decentralization hold for public decision-making as well. Who has what information? Whose preferences are to be reflected in decisions? What incentive mechanisms are in place to respond to information and take preferences into account? Conceptually oriented work that applies the insights of organizational theory, public choice, industrial organization and network theory to the context of food assistance programs and policies is of interest.

Implications of Limited and Biased Survey Information on Programs

Although there are both false positives and false negatives, respondents to survey questions on average underreport participation in food assistance programs by magnitudes of about one-fourth. Program participation rates—whether expressed relative to total population or an estimate of eligible population—would be biased downwards if survey data alone were used to construct them (actual program participation rates use administrative data to obtain a count of program participants). What types of biases emerge in summary statistics and in regression coefficients? How does the form and magnitudes of those biases depend on the extent of Type I and Type II errors, the correlations between program participation and other variables, and whether program participation is treated as a dependent or independent variable in a regression context? What treatments and or adjustment factors might eliminate or reduce various biases and under what conditions? There is interest in synthesizing and developing econometric analyses and formulae by which to deepen understanding of the biases that result from underreporting. For the scope of work in this area, there is limited expectation of empirical implementation using actual food assistance program data.

Other topics related to welfare reform and macroeconomic interactions with food assistance will be considered.

This program is designed to encourage:

• Experienced researchers in other areas to start projects in the area of food assistance;
• Research on food assistance using innovative approaches and research methods;
• Smaller, start-up projects with the potential to make a significant contribution to food assistance research; and
• Younger and junior scholars to develop research agendas in the area of food assistance.

Applications are due July 1, 2008. Absolutely no applications will be accepted after July 1. For more information, contact the Harris School at (773) 702-3957 or clarkb@uchicago.edu.

Applications and Grant Terms

The awards will cover a period of performance from approximately October 1, 2008 through December 31, 2009. Grant recipients will be expected to present their preliminary work at two workshops to be held in the winter of 2009 and in late summer of 2009 in Chicago and are required to present their research at a conference in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2009.

Funding for these studies is provided by the United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service through the Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics (RIDGE) Program.

Current and Former Recipients of USDA Food Assistance Research Development Grants