International Growth Centre’s Research Funding Program

IGC research direction is anchored in productivity and innovation, and the microeconomic transformations that drive sustainable growth. These include enhancing firm capabilities, improving state effectiveness, developing sound urbanisation strategies, and transitioning towards sustainable energy practices, all while safeguarding the natural environment.

They embrace all quantitative research methods and approaches that are grounded in data, and encourage the use of administrative data as well, which can offer important insights due to its detailed and often longitudinal nature.

Themes

• They are particularly interested in projects that address these issues through one of the four themes:
  • Firms, trade, and productivity – Increasing productivity through structural changes in firms’ capabilities, the functioning of markets and how firms interact with world markets, while promoting green innovation and enhancing resilience against climate shocks.
  • State effectiveness – Escaping fragility and improving the capabilities and effectiveness of states to deliver higher rates of inclusive growth, while addressing the challenges of environmental externalities.
  • Cities – Making cities more productive and inclusive while addressing the downsides of density and ensuring resilience to climate change.
  • Energy and environment – Improving access to reliable, cost-efficient energy, supporting the transition to clean energy, reducing global and local environmental externalities, and more effectively managing natural capital.

Types of Awards

• They offer two types of awards
  • Full research grants
    • These grants are for fully-developed research projects. Proposals can be for any type of research, and they encourage the use of a variety of approaches, including using secondary data.
    • Proposals can also be submitted for funding the continuation of research projects that have already started where new research opportunities arise.
    • The expectation is that these projects will result in a paper publishable in a top Economics journal, as well as generate significant policy impact. There is no limit on the amount that can be awarded.
    • The average project budgets are GBP 60,000, and they rarely fund projects over GBP 125,000.
  • Small research grants
    • These grants are for pilot studies and exploratory research. They also strongly encourage applicants who want to work purely on administrative data to apply through this window.
    • All small grants will be capped at GBP 30,000, while research that is purely exploratory in nature will be capped at GBP 20,000.
    • Researchers will be expected to conduct their research in an IGC resident country, and connect to the IGC country team during proposal development, which comes with several advantages.
    • Small grants are designed to enable researchers to further refine and test innovative research ideas with high potential policy impact by conducting preliminary research and engaging with partners.
    • They encourage any researcher to apply for these, but in particular PhD students, early career researchers, and researchers based in developing countries.
      • Pilot grants will be awarded to projects with a reasonably well-developed research question, but for which the design and implementation requires further testing and pilot data before scale-up into a larger research study.
      • New evidence from the pilot can also sometimes lead to an adjustment or reformulation of the research question.
      • Exploratory work relates to preliminary research ideas, such as conducting background research, developing partnerships, visiting field sites, and collecting preliminary data. The expectation is that these funds will be used to support costs related to the researcher’s travel and IGC country team and policymaker engagement to develop a proposal for a pilot or full-scale study during subsequent call for proposals.
      • They do not expect to award more than GBP 20,000 for purely exploratory work that does not involve a pilot component.

Eligibility Criteria

• The IGC gives equal opportunity to researchers from all over the world, and proposals are assessed on quality and the evaluation.
• For the small grants, researchers must conduct their research in an IGC resident country (Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jordan, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zambia), and get in touch with the IGC country team as they work on their proposals.
• The IGC will not fund projects that are
  • purely qualitative,
  • not grounded in sound economic research principles, or
  • relevant only to middle- or high-income countries.
• Projects in IGC countries are more likely to be approved.
• Applications that are in line with IGC research priorities, empirically rigorous, advance the knowledge about inclusive growth policy, and have strong value for money are favoured.
• A single researcher can be included in more than one proposal during the same call for proposals. A single institution is also allowed to submit multiple proposals. If multiple proposals are submitted, the researcher and/or institutions involved should have the capacity to conduct the research according to the proposed timescales.

For more information, visit IGC.