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Santiago and Chicago, August 2, 2023 – The Universidad Andrés Bello (UNAB) and the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Latin America (BFI-LATAM) at the University of Chicago are pleased to announce the award of five new grants supporting research by University of Chicago and UNAB faculty focused on economic policy for Latin America.

The grants are part of a collaboration launched in 2022 between UNAB and BFI-LATAM that supports cutting-edge research involving scholars from both institutions. The academic collaboration will host conferences and seminars in both the United States and Latin America, facilitate the exchange of professors and students between both institutions, and will launch a new data hub designed to support new research and contribute to economic policy through the dissemination of this work throughout Latin America.

“We were thrilled with the outstanding quality of applications from both institutions for the first grants to be awarded from this collaboration,” said Fernando Alvarez, BFI-LATAM Director and the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor in the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics, University of Chicago. “Each awarded project shows significant promise in various areas, such as innovation, feasibility, potential impact, and overall merit. This is an exciting beginning to our research partnership.”

Grants are intended to support a number of research activities, including the purchase of new data sets and software, research assistants, and travel. When published, the insights gleaned from this research and data will have real-world impacts across a variety of topics and fields of study.

“We are very much looking forward to the research findings these projects will produce,” said Miguel Vargas Román, Dean Faculty of Business and Economics, UNAB. “Each project is distinguished for its analytical robustness and its alignment with the objectives set by UNAB and the University of Chicago for this call for projects.”

UNAB and BFI-LATAM are proud to announce the recipients of the research grants, listed below, along with the research the grant will be supporting.


Research: Task Management with Due Diligence

Research: State in Society: Evidence from Colombian Paramilitarism

Research: The Market for (Fraudulent) Paid Sick Leaves in Chile

Research: Remote Work, Wages, and Competition: Disentangling Demand and Supply Influences

Research: Demand Shocks and New Firm Dynamics: Evidence from the Dominican Republic