In 2017, the Becker Friedman Institute (BFI) launched a unique data acquisition grant program to support faculty and spur new, rigorous research. In its fourth round of grants, drawn from a competitive spring 2019 application process, BFI is pleased to announce the award of ten new data acquisition grants to University of Chicago faculty and students. These data sets will help promote ground-breaking research on a range of diverse topics. When published, the insights gleaned from this research and data will have real-world impacts across a variety of topics and fields of study.

With the addition of these 2019 awards, BFI has granted a total of 33 grants to-date. The full listing of BFI data acquisition grants can be found here.

BFI is proud to announce the recipients of the newest data acquisition grants, listed below, along with data source and the research the new data will be supporting.

Spring 2019 Awards

Fiona Burlig and Amir Jina
Data Source: New survey
Research: Farmer information about weather and agricultural productivity in India

Thomas Covert
Data Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF)
Research: Demand-side policy and imperfect competition in wind turbines

Thomas Covert and Michael Greenstone
Ludovica Gazze (Staff Award)
Olga Rostapshova (Staff Award)
Data Source: GHGsat
Research: Methane emissions at oil and gas facilities

Michael Dinerstein and Constantine Yannelis
Data Sources: Booth Consumer Credit Panel and National Student Clearing House (NSC)
Research: Federal student loan repayment terms and outcomes

Yana Gallen
Data Source: Wisr
Research: Organization of online university advice networks

Michael Greenstone
Miguel Morales-Mosquera (Student Award)
Data Source: To be determined
Research: Housing prices in Colombia

Greg Kaplan
Lun Li (Student Award)
Data Source: GS1 barcode data
Research: Advertising expenditures and product entry decisions

Elisabeth Kempf
Data Source: Infutor
Research: Partisan perceptions and the U.S. economy

Magne Mogstad and Jack Mountjoy
Data Source: To be determined
Research: Labor productivity in Norway

James Robinson
Data Source:  S&N British Data Archive Ltd
Research: Industrialization and economic inequality in England

More information on BFI’s data acquisition grant program can be found on the faculty intranet here. The fall 2019 application will open on October 7 and close on December 16, 2019.