GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING AN EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

grants for developing country researchers conducting

policy impact evaluations on

human capital investment policies and programs

Expression of interest need not be very long (maximum of 10 double-spaced pages). The objective here is to introduce the basic idea, show its feasibility in methodological and data terms and describe the composition of the team. If the project is shortlisted at this stage, advice and technical support will be provided in order to develop a full proposal. All accepted final projects receive a lump-sum amount of CAN $20,000 per project. Experimental projects receive up to CAN $90,000 each for the experiment/survey component. Payments are made in several installments linked to project outputs.

Teams are strongly encouraged to include female researchers and young researchers. The proposed research should lead to capacity building of strong economists and high quality and policy relevant research. The ideal team is composed of an experienced researcher who involves a number of less experienced researchers, including some female researchers, in a substantial manner.Researchers may not have more than two proposals under evaluation at any given time and no researcher can be a member of more than one PEP-financed team.

TO SUBMIT AN EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

Expressions of interest can be received at any time. You are strongly encouraged to submit your expression of interest directly on the PEP web site. Here are the steps to follow:

  1. The leader and all members of the project must first have registered before submitting a new proposal. To register, select the item "Register" in the main menu, and follow the instructions to complete the registration. You will receive a username and password by email, normally within minutes.
  2. Note that all members of the project must post their CV. To do this, each member should click on "Login" on the PEP web site homepage, provide "User ID" and "password", select "My Profile", "Update CV".
  3. To then submit the proposal, the leader must login (choose login from the main menu), click on "Submit New Proposal for PEP Funding" and fill out the required information.
  4. To check that the proposal has been submitted, login once more and check that your proposal appears in your main page: "My Proposals", "PMMA", "proposal number". At this stage, you may choose "Insert other document" in order to post examples of past work by team members in related areas, if you wish.

If you have any difficulties with the above steps, please contact us at for assistance. If the problem cannot be resolved, you may send us your proposal, CVs for all team members and examples of past work by email to . Please do not forget to indicate that you are submitting an expression of interest to PMMA for consideration by the Policy Impact Evaluation Research Initiative (PIERI).

TIMETABLE

Timetable for project selection

November 30, 2007: Expression of interest submission deadline

January 1,2008: Shortlist of projects receive first round of comments and are invited to develop a full proposal

March 30, 2008: Deadline for submitting full proposals

April 30, 2008: Final shortlist and invitation to present proposals

June 15, 2008: Meeting for the presentation of shortlisted proposals

July 1, 2008: Announcement of proposals selected for funding

Timetable for experimental evaluation projects:

September 1, 2008: First interim report (survey/experiment design and/or pilot study results)

September 15, 2008: Comments on first interim report

October-November 2008: Baseline survey (optional) followed by experiment.

December 2008: Presentation of survey/experiment implementation at PEP general meeting

June 2009: Second interim report (analysis of baseline data)

July 2009: Comments on second interim report

October-November 2009: Follow-up survey.

February 15, 2010: Draft final report

March 2010: Study visit

May 2010: Final report

June 2010: Presentation of final report at PEP general meeting

June-December 2010: Working paper

Timetable for non-experimental evaluation projects:

October 30, 2008: Interim report (initial results)

December 2008: Presentation of interim report at PEP general meeting

August 2009: Draft final report

Fall 2009: Study visit

May 2010: Final report

June 2010: Presentation of final report at PEP general meeting

June-December 2010: Working paper

CONTENTS OF THE EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

All of the following sections should be included AND CLEARLY LABELLED in a concise presentation. If any sections are missing or incomplete, your expression of interest will not be evaluated. Please make sure to date your document and indicate the authors' names.

A short abstract (100 to 150 words)

A.Aimsand objectives (1.5 pages)

  1. Study overview
  2. Main research questions and core research objectives

B.Methods (7.5 pages)

  1. General description of the intervention, population to be studied, outcomes of interest, timing of effects, existing data and/or data to be collected, methods to be used to analyze data
  2. The experiment/intervention (experimental projects only)
  3. What experiment/intervention will you do?
  4. How will this work
  5. Who are the beneficiaries?
  6. How will they benefit?
  7. How do you draw the control group to which you compare the treated group?
  8. Who will do it?
  9. What potential problems do you foresee and how will you overcome these?
  10. Data collection methods (experimental projects only)
  11. Will a baseline data be collected or will you use existing data for the baseline?
  12. What population will be studied
  13. Sampling design, sample size and statistical power
  14. Key data to be collected (and how this will be done)
  15. Additional data to be collected
  16. Modelling and testing
  17. What model/idea will you test with these methods
  18. What empirical methods will you use to do this testing
  19. What empirical problems do you foresee
  20. Human subjects concerns
  21. Any ethical, social, gender or environmental issues or risks which should be noted
  22. Explanation of how project will comply with requirements of local ethics review boards (e.g., how will you do informed consent; how will you ensure that no one comes to any harm; how will you ensure confidentiality etc…)

C.The study team (1 page)

  1. Principal investigator; brief bio and explanation as to why they are well suited to lead this project.
  2. Other key research staff and their roles. List indicating age (or if they are under 30), sex,prior training and experience in the issues for each of the team members.
  3. Collaborators/consortium arrangements
  4. Are there collaborators involved?
  5. Who does what?
  6. How will you resolve disputes?

d. Past, current or pending projects in related areas involving team members: list with name of funding institution, title of project, list of team members involved.

For experimental projects only: Projects that involve the design and implementation of a randomized experiment should pay particular attention to the following aspects:

  • Policies must be expected to have observable effects during the study period.
  • Feasibility: you should document the particular institutional arrangements made to ensure feasibility of the project. This could include (but is not limited to) showing that you could have access to a synchronized data collection (e.g., provided by CBMS projects) and/or to some policy intervention (e.g., delivered by NGO). The randomized trial could also take place as an additional innovation over the course of the program life. Additional sources of funding may justify requests of adjustment to the timetable defined above.
  • Method and level of randomization, power of the design for detecting impacts. A good reference for thinking about these issues is: Duflo, Esther, Rachel Glennerster and Michael Kremer. 2006. Using randomization in development economics research: a toolkit. Forthcoming Handbook of Development Economics Volume 4, edited by Robert E. Evenson and T. Paul Schultz, Amsterdam, North-Holland). The optimal design software provided by the University of Michigan ( can be a useful tool for power computations.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Projects will be evaluated using a scoring mechanism. The weights given to each item reflect their importance for selection:

Item / Score
Abstract, main research question and core research objectives / 5
General description of the intervention, population to be studied, outcomes of interest, timing of effects, existing data and/or data to be collected, methods to be used to analyze data / 10
The experiment/intervention (experimental projects only) / 10
Data collection methods (experimental projects only) / 10
Modelling and testing / 10
Human subjects concerns / 5
The study team / 10
Total / 60

WHO CAN APPLY?

All developing country nationals who will reside in a developing country during the full course of the project. PEP welcomes proposals from all developing countries. Applications from the Asia-Pacific region are especially welcome. University-level training in Economics or equivalent experience will generally be required. Interested researchers who are ineligible for funding are nonetheless encouraged to use the training material, readings and other information posted on the PEP web site, as well as sharing their research results with us. On some occasions, we may invite such researchers to act as resource persons or invited speakers at PEP meetings if their research is found to be of particular interest to PEP researchers. Researchers funded by the PEP network are eligible to submit a new proposal once the final report of their current project has been formally approved.

For further information, contact PEP at or consult our web site at .
Appendix: Contents of the full proposal.

A set of projects will be selected on the basis of the expression of interest. The teams will then be asked to develop a full proposal (see timeline section above). We provide below a description of the contents of the full proposal. Please note that these guidelines relate to the full proposal and not the expression of interest.

A short abstract (100 to 250 words)

A.Aims (1.5 pages)

  1. Study overview
  2. Main research questions and core research objectives

B.Background and policy relevance (3.5 pages)

  1. Literature review directly relevant to main research questions
  2. Explanation of what are the gaps in this literature
  3. Explanation of how filling these gaps is relevant to specific country policy issues

C.Methods (15 pages)

  1. General description of the intervention, population to be studied, outcomes of interest, timing of effects, existing data and/or data to be collected, methods to be used to analyze data
  2. The experiment/intervention (experimental projects only)
  3. What experiment/intervention will you do?
  4. How will this work
  5. Who are the beneficiaries?
  6. How will they benefit?
  7. How do you draw the control group to which you compare the treated group?
  8. Who will do it?
  9. What potential problems do you foresee and how will you overcome these?
  10. Data collection methods (experimental projects only)
  1. Will a baseline data be collected or will you use existing data for the baseline?
  2. What population will be studied
  3. Sampling design, sample size and statistical power
  4. Key data to be collected (and how this will be done)
  5. Additional data to be collected
  6. Modeling and testing
  1. What model/idea will you test with these methods
  2. What empirical methods will you use to do this testing
  3. What empirical problems do you foresee
  4. Human subjects concerns
  1. Any ethical, social, gender or environmental issues or risks which should be noted
  2. Explanation of how project will comply with requirements of local ethics review boards (e.g., how will you do informed consent; how will you ensure that no one comes to any harm; how will you ensure confidentiality etc…)

D.Consultation and dissemination strategy (1 page)

  1. How, in the elaboration and execution of your project, will you consult with policy makers, civil society representatives and other parties interested in the research issues you examine?
  2. How and where research results will be disseminated to academics, policy-makers and the public: publications, policy briefs, seminars, conferences, etc. (see PEP's consultation and dissemination strategy for ideas)

E.The study team (no page restriction)

  1. Principal investigator; brief bio and explanation as to why they are well suited to lead this project.
  2. Other key research staff and their roles. List indicating age (or if they are under 30), sex, prior training and experience in the issues for each of the team members. Description of the research capacities that team members and their institutions are expected to build through their participation in this project: This is an important aspect in the evaluation of proposals and should be presented in some detail. What techniques, literature, theories, tools, etc. will the team and their institutions learn or deepen their knowledge of? Please also indicate what tasks each team member would carry out in executing the project.
  3. Collaborators/consortium arrangements
  4. Are there collaborators involved?
  5. Who does what?
  6. How will you resolve disputes?
  7. Past, current or pending projects in related areas involving team members: list with name of funding institution, title of project, list of team members involved.

F.Timeline

G.Budget