OARS funding Economics

USAID/Haiti has had success supporting high-potential MSMEs with advisory services and matching grants, as well as in strengthening high-potential value chains, most recently with its Leveraging Effective Applications of Direct investment (LEAD) and the Local Enterprise Value chain Enhancement (LEVE) programs. But the Mission is interested in exploring existing and new market-led and cost-effective ways of supporting these enterprises, and to gather data to help determine which of these is most efficient and cost-effective. Problem Statement: Haitian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) are critical to Haiti's economy. Not only do Haitian MSMEs account for over 80% of current Haitian employment. But more importantly, it is from within the MSME community that Haiti's future success stories will emerge - the enterprises which generate growth, create jobs and lead Haiti to a modern, more prosperous economy.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation's largest philanthropy dedicated solely to health, has issued a call for proposals for research on the ways that for-profit anchors advance health and well-being in the communities where they are located. Funded studies are expected to include rigorous empirical research that can inform the business case for why and how more companies serve as anchor institutions in their immediate surrounding geographies. Studies should also inform future RWJF strategies to motivate companies to act in a way that promotes health and well-being. Potential research questions might include: What factors facilitate or hinder anchor businesses from addressing health equity or social determinants of health? What are the motivations and incentives of anchor businesses across a range of sectors? What kind of equity-promoting narrative and framing resonates with the leaders of corporate anchor institutions? What interventions (led or co-led by corporate anchors) appear to be effective or show promise? What tools and resources would most help leaders of anchor businesses who are committed to community health improvement?

This Funding Opportunity Announcement will develop solutions to challenges facing the existing fleet of coal power plants as well as technologies that can enhance the performance and economics of future coal plants. Contributing Department of Energy Fossil Energy programs under Crosscutting Research include Sensors and Controls, Water Management, and Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis.

The goal of this Activity is to facilitate the economic recovery of select crisis-affected communities in North-Eastern Nigeria. The purpose is to bolster the three state governments' capacities to create and sustain enabling environments for the Small Town Water Supply and Sanitation Agencies (STWSSA) and Water Consumer Associations (WCA) operators, and for these service provision agencies to increase their capacities to sustainably provide essential WASH services. This Activity will: ● increase access to water and sanitation services in order to reduce illnesses and child mortality, and to sustain health outcomes; and ● Strengthen local WASH institutions including STWSSAs and WCAs to sustain WASH services.

The primary objective of the RCDG program is to improve the economic condition of rural areas by assisting individuals or entities in the startup, expansion or operational improvement of rural cooperatives and other business entities. Grants are awarded competitively on an annual basis to Rural Cooperative Development Centers who in turn provide technical assistance to individuals and entities.

Agency Overview: The Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), an organization within the Department of Energy (DOE), is chartered by Congress in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358) to: "(A) to enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that result in- (i) reductions of imports of energy from foreign sources; (ii) reductions of energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; and (iii) improvement in the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; and (B) to ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies." ARPA-E issues this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) under the programmatic authorizing statute codified at 42 U.S.C. § 16538. The FOA and any awards made under this FOA are subject to 2 C.F.R. Part 200 as amended by 2 C.F.R. Part 910. ARPA-E funds research on and the development of high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. The agency focuses on technologies that can be meaningfully advanced with a modest investment over a defined period of time in order to catalyze the translation from scientific discovery to early-stage technology.

NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration & Research (OER) is soliciting proposals for ocean exploration in waters under U.S. jurisdiction, including the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). OER is interested in projects that provide data and information that may inform ocean-related segments of the U.S. economy, also referred to as the Blue Economy, and in projects that support Seabed 2030 goals, an international collaboration to fully map the global ocean by the year 2030.

Society's overwhelming reliance on this complex cyberspace, however, has exposed its fragility and vulnerabilities that defy existing cyber-defense measures; corporations, agencies, national infrastructure and individuals continue to suffer cyber-attacks. Achieving a truly secure cyberspace requires addressing both challenging scientific and engineering problems involving many components of a system, and vulnerabilities that stem from human behaviors and choices. Examining the fundamentals of security and privacy as a multidisciplinary subject can lead to fundamentally new ways to design, build and operate cyber systems, protect existing infrastructure, and motivate and educate individuals about cybersecurity. The Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program welcomes proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, and draw on expertise in one or more of these areas: computing, communication and information sciences; engineering; economics; education; mathematics; statistics; and social and behavioral sciences. Proposals that advance the field of cybersecurity and privacy within a single discipline or interdisciplinary efforts that span multiple disciplines are both encouraged.

NSF has long supported transformative research in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The resulting innovations offer new levels of economic opportunity and growth, safety and security, and health and wellness. At the same time, broad acceptance of large-scale deployments of AI systems relies critically on their trustworthiness which, in turn, depends upon the collective ability to ensure, assess, and ultimately demonstrate the fairness, transparency, explainability, and accountability of such systems. Importantly, the beneficial effects of AI systems should be broadly available across all segments of society. NSF and Amazon are partnering to jointly support computational research focused on fairness in AI, with the goal of contributing to trustworthy AI systems that are readily accepted and deployed to tackle grand challenges facing society. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to transparency, explainability, accountability, potential adverse biases and effects, mitigation strategies, validation of fairness, and considerations of inclusivity. Funded projects will enable broadened acceptance of AI systems, helping the U.S. further capitalize on the potential of AI technologies.

The Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI) seeks to solve critical organic agriculture issues, priorities, or problems through the integration of research, education, and extension activities. The purpose of this program is to fund projects that will enhance the ability of producers and processors who have already adopted organic standards to grow and market high quality organic agricultural products. Priority concerns include biological, physical, and social sciences, including economics. The OREI is particularly interested in projects that emphasize research, education and outreach that assist farmers and ranchers with whole farm planning by delivering practical research-based information. Projects should plan to deliver applied production information to producers. Fieldwork must be done on certified organic land or on land in transition to organic certification, as appropriate to project goals and objectives. Refer to the USDA National Organic Program for organic production standards.

Grants of up to $5,000 will be awarded to local nonprofit organizations located within the service area of individual Walmart stores in the areas of hunger relief and healthy eating, health and human services, quality of life, education, community and economic development, diversity and inclusion, public safety, and environmental sustainability.

Communities in the United States (US) and around the world are entering a new era of transformation in which residents and their surrounding environments are increasingly connected through rapidly-changing intelligent technologies. This transformation offers great promise for improved wellbeing and prosperity but poses significant challenges at the complex intersection of technology and society. The goal of the NSF Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) program solicitation is to accelerate the creation of the scientific and engineering foundations that will enable smart and connected communities to bring about new levels of economic opportunity and growth, safety and security, health and wellness, and overall quality of life.

In selecting projects for funding, the Foundation seeks proposals for original initiatives led by outstanding individuals or teams.  We are interested in projects that have a high expected return to society, exhibit a high degree of methodological rigor, and for which funding from the private sector, government, or other foundations is not yet widely available.

Submit an application if you are a successful top-rank junior researcher from abroad, only completed your doctorate with distinction in the last six years, and have published work in prestigious international journals or publishing houses. The Sofja Kovalevskaja Award allows you to spend five years building up a working group and working on a high-profile, innovative research project of your own choice at a research institution of your own choice in Germany.

A proposal that applies anthropological methods to a social problem but does not propose how that problem provides an opportunity to make a theory-testing and/or theory expanding contribution to anthropology will be returned without review. Program research priorities include, but are not limited to, research that increases our understanding of: Socio-cultural drivers of critical anthropogenic processes such as deforestation, desertification, land cover change, urbanization, and poverty Resilience and robustness of socio-cultural systems Scientific principles underlying conflict, cooperation, and altruism Economy, culture, migration, and globalization Variability and change in kinship and family norms and practices General cultural and social principles underlining the drivers of specific health outcomes and disease transmission Social regulation, governmentality, and violence Origins of complexity in socio-cultural systems Language and culture: orality and literacy, sociolinguistics, and cognition Human variation through empirically grounded ethnographic descriptions Mathematical and computational models of sociocultural systems such as social network analysis, agent-based models, multi-level models, and modes that integrate agent-based simulations and geographic information systems (GIS)

The purpose of the IR-4 program is to enable the crop protection industry to provide safe, effective, and economical crop protection products for growers and consumers of minor/specialty crops. The crop protection industry cannot justify the costs associated with the research and development, registration, production, and marketing of crop protection products for minor/specialty crops due to the smaller market base and limited sales potential. The IR-4 program provides the assistance needed to ensure that new and more effective crop protection products are developed and made available to minor/specialty crop producers. These efforts require effective collaborations among federal agencies, the crop protection industry, and land-grant colleges and universities.

The purpose of the Crop Protection and Pest Management program is to address high priority issues related to pests and their management using IPM approaches at the state, regional and national levels. The CPPM program supports projects that will ensure food security and respond effectively to other major societal pest management challenges with comprehensive IPM approaches that are economically viable, ecologically prudent, and safe for human health. The CPPM program addresses IPM challenges for emerging issues and existing priority pest concerns that can be addressed more effectively with new and emerging technologies. The outcomes of the CPPM program are effective, affordable, and environmentally sound IPM practices and strategies needed to maintain agricultural productivity and healthy communities

This program seeks to prepare, nurture, and grow the national scientific research workforce for creating, utilizing, and supporting advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) to enable and potentially transform fundamental science and engineering research and contribute to the Nation's overall economic competitiveness and security. The goals of this solicitation are to (i) ensure broad adoption of CI tools, methods, and resources by the research community in order to catalyze major research advances and to enhance researchers' abilities to lead the development of new CI; and (ii) integrate core literacy and discipline-appropriate advanced skills in advanced CI as well as computational and data-driven science and engineering into the Nation's educational curriculum/instructional material fabric spanning undergraduate and graduate courses for advancing fundamental research. Pilot and Implementation projects may target one or both of the solicitation goals, while Large-scale Project Conceptualization projects must address both goals. For the purpose of this solicitation, advanced CI is broadly defined as the set of resources, tools, methods, and services for advanced computation, large-scale data handling and analytics, and networking and security for large-scale systems that collectively enable potentially transformative fundamental research.

The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) is offering semester-long sabbaticals for the study, research, and teaching of classical liberal ideas including private property, free speech, individual rights, open markets and other precepts. Sabbatical positions will be offered in the 2018-2020 academic years, and sabbaticals must be taken during the designated periods. Both tenured and tenure track may apply. IHS traditionally works with academics in the fields of economics, political science, philosophy, history, and law, however scholars in other disciplines are welcome to apply.  Available sabbatical time-frames include:  -2019 spring semester  -2019-20 academic year, spring and fall semesters 

Signature Employment Grants are awarded nationally to fund new pilot initiatives, demonstration projects or social ventures that lead to the generation of new ideas to solve the high unemployment and underemployment of individuals with disabilities. Preference is given for interventions that overcome specific employment barriers related to long-term dependence on public assistance, advance competitive employment in a cost-effective manner, or launch a social enterprise or individual entrepreneurship project. Signature grants are not intended to fund project expansions or bring proven projects to new communities, unless there is a significant scale, scope or replicable component. Innovation lies at the core of all signature employment grants.