Grants

This research project traces the history of German energy policy from 1945 to the present. It explores the political economy behind Germany’s transition from coal, to oil, to green energy, the crises driving these shifts, and the evolving efforts to balance affordability with security and environmental protection.

This research project will study the long-run interactions between transport infrastructure and economic development using spatially-disaggregated data for England and Wales over the period c.1817—2011. It will look to inform policy toward large investments in physical infrastructures.

This research project uses macroeconomic data going back to the mid-19th century to analyze issues such as the relation between income distribution and economic growth; and how debt, asset prices, and growth moved together the last 160 years.

This research project lays a foundation for new and better long-run estimates of poverty and inequality around the world through the collection, digitisation, and harmonisation of household budget data.

This research project explores how genomic data can inform the understanding of social science questions. The genomic revolution means that social scientists are able to correlate a range of outcomes and behaviors with genes. This research studies what these correlations mean.

This research project improves our understanding of the effects of intellectual property rights—and in particular copyrights—on creativity and innovation.

This research project deepens our understanding of labor market conditions during the Great Depression by assemling data at the national, state, and industry level for jobs created, jobs destroyed, unemployment, employment, and the labor force.

This research project investigates the air quality co-benefits of climate policy. Reduced burning of fossil fuels curbs not only CO2 emissions but also emissions of hazardous co-pollutants, such as particulate matter. The extent of air quality co-benefits relative to CO2 reduction varies across regions and pollution sources, and hence the distribution of emissions reductions matters for both efficiency and equity.

This research project develops a “Money View” analysis of the recent evolution of China’s financial system.

This research project examines the long process of innovation at Fair Isaac, the analytics firm behind the FICO scoring system.

This research project explores the process of modern (shadow) money creation in hierarchical and interconnected monetary systems. In theorizing the dynamic instability of shadow money, it provides a comparative account of the structural and institutional specifics of shadow money in the US, Eurozone and China, and the policy challenges thereof.

This research project explores the underlying limits—especially of the social and economic sciences—in identifying causalities including, among other aspects, the strong epistemological and statistical limitations of and assumptions behind the methods applied.

This research project studies the macroeconomic effects of rising inequality by focusing not on top incomes but instead on the economics of the “bottom 99%” which has been squeezed out by rising inequality and falling labor shares.

This research project addresses the problem of inferring causal relationships in economics. It investigates the philosophical roots of the problem and develops econometric tools which take into account the complexity of economic systems.

This research project continues the work of the University of Texas Inequality Project, developing new data and research in several technical areas.