The Economics of Transportation and Infrastructure includes research on the costs, benefits, opportunities, and bottlenecks associated with building world-class infrastructure in the U.S.

Examples of recent grants in this area include the following projects:

• Milena Almagro, The University of Chicago (G-2024-22704) To analyze economic, technological, and social factors that determine the success of urban transportation systems in theory and in practice
• Edward Glaeser, NBER (G-2024-22705) To study transportation infrastructure challenges in the United States, including project selection, financing strategies, and procurement practices

The Economics of Caregiving includes research on the costs, benefits, opportunities, and bottlenecks associated with providing world-class caregiving in the U.S. for those who cannot take care of themselves.

Examples of recent grants in this area include the following projects:

• Aaron Sojourner, Upjohn Institute for Employment Research (G-2024-22667) To aid the design of workforce policies in the childcare sector by estimating the responsiveness of the labor supply to changes in wages, child-staff ratios, and other job characteristics
• Misty Heggeness, University of Kansas Center for Research (G-2023-19637) To compile and collect high quality data about the U.S. Care Economy for use both by researchers and, through an online statistical dashboard, by the public as well
• Alison Gopnik, University of California- Berkeley (G-2023-20984) To establish an interdisciplinary research program on the social science of caregiving and build empirical and theoretical foundations for the cognitive economics of care
• Nancy Folbre, PERI Support Fund (G-2024-22493) To improve the availability, accessibility, and accuracy of data on the U.S. care economy
• Gal Wettstein, Boston College (G-2024-22514) To analyze how reimbursement policies for home-and-community-based services (HCBS) impact care recipients and their caregivers

Strengthening the Economics Profession includes broad opportunities both to engage with research enablers ranging from new conferences or methodological trainings to new datasets or computational techniques.

Examples of recent grants in this area include the following projects:

• Janet Currie, NBER (G-2023-19633) To support over 50 programs with thousands of in-person and online participants at the annual NBER Summer Institute
• Nicholas Huntington-Kline, Seattle University (G-2022-19377) To assess experimentally how “researcher degrees of freedom” influence and potentially distort the publication, interpretation, and reliability of empirical literature
• Steve Pierson, American Statistical Association (G-2022-19500) To monitor and report on the health of the federal statistical system
• Andrew Gelman, Columbia University (G-2024-22518) To develop a unified Bayesian approach to estimating heterogeneous causal effects
• Timothy Bresnahan, NBER (G-2024-22690) To support early-career researchers working on the net federal budgetary impacts of proposed legislation for enhancing U.S. productivity