Opportunities Supported by the EGC Incubation Fund
The EGC Incubation Fund enables EGC faculty researchers to take advantage of high–potential, time–sensitive, policy–focused research opportunities alongside opening many ways to directly involve Yale students, junior researchers, and international collaborators in research.
Established in early 2023, and leveraging the initial set of resources raised, the EGC Incubation Fund has advanced a wide-ranging portfolio of high-impact, policy-relevant opportunities through the following targeted investments:
AY 2025-26
- Draft Proposal for a Unified Carbon Market (report prepared at the request of the COP30 Presidency): For advancing global climate policy — translating recommendations from the report into Portuguese and supporting crucial timely engagement with Brazilian mid-officials during COP30 negotiations.
AY 2024-25
- Direct Benefit Transfers for Electricity: For sustaining critical field research — providing rapid bridge funding after an unexpected US federal grant termination to continue collaboration with government counterparts on a policy-relevant study in India.
- Women’s Socioeconomic Empowerment: For informing the design of a scalable intervention — enabling census-style baseline surveys covering over 60,000 households in Madhya Pradesh, India.
- North East Universities Gender Day Event: For sharing insights from research exploring the role of gender in the economy — providing a valuable platform for sharing presentations and for PhD students to also pitch early stage research ideas and receive feedback from senior scholars
- Designing Quality Care Policy-Research Event: For advancing research-policy linkages — enabling timely strategic engagement with Kenyan policymakers to discuss scaling pathways for a tailored child development and women’s empowerment intervention in Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya.
AY 2023-24
- Innovation and Technology Diffusion: For advancing global market research — enabling rapid processing and analysis of rich, decades-old proprietary data.
- Firm Growth and Networks through Trade Fairs: For testing the impact of trade fairs — taking advantage of a time-sensitive opportunity to experimentally evaluate how subsidized attendance boosts small-firm growth and firm-to-firm connections in Chile.
- Worker Preferences in High-Informality Settings: For better understanding labor market dynamics — launching a novel data collection effort with residents of Brazil’s largest favela to inform policy approaches to self-employment and informality.
- Strengthening Local Capacity: For building sustainable local research leadership — providing bridge funding to support doctoral training for the field intervention lead on an early childhood education and care project in Kenya.
- Cross-Cultural Learning: For fostering exchange and dialogue — supporting the launch of a pilot interactive discussion series between economic undergraduates in the US and Cuba.