Doing Economics

5.3 Where to Look for Funding?
The ideal approach to scientific research involves observing some
phenomenon in the real world, speculating about the causes or
consequences of that phenomenon, generating some testable predictions
about some of those causes or consequences, finding data to test those
predictions (possibly with the help of grant funding), and then testing those
predictions.
But in the real world where we live, not all scientific endeavors proceed
in the way just described. Very often, “research” questions are answered
because someone outside of the research community (e.g., a government
agency, a firm, or a nongovernmental organization) has an interest in
knowing the answer to specific questions and is giving out funding for it.
There are thus two broad approaches to research. The first starts from
observation and then goes in search of funding to test whatever derives
from that observation. The second is much like famous climber George
Mallory’s reason for climbing Mount Everest,
9
 and it starts from there being
some funding available to answer a specific research question posed by the
funding source or to answer a research question in the context of the
funding source’s call for proposals.
Under the former approach, it helps to be on the lookout for calls or
requests for proposals or applications (CfPs, RfPs, or RfAs; the US
government uses RfP for contracts, but RfA for grants) coming out of
various organizations. Many universities will have an entire web page
dedicated to upcoming funding deadlines, often searchable by how soon the
deadline is coming, by broad research area (e.g., natural vs. social sciences),
or by topic. It also helps to be proactive in regularly looking at various
prospective sources of funding’s websites. Although what those sources are
will obviously vary from field to field and from discipline to discipline,
there are some aggregator websites outside of research universities that can
be very useful. As of this writing, examples of those websites include the

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Grants.gov website in the US, the websites of the Marie Curie Fellowships,
the European Research Council, and the European Commission in Europe,
and the Economic & Social Research Council in the United Kingdom.
Almost all if not all of those sources of funding will tend to have funding
for broad research areas instead of narrower research questions.
Under the latter approach, catch as catch can, and getting funding
becomes a matter of applying for any project you feel qualified to undertake
and feel like you have the bandwidth for, keeping in mind the points raised
in the previous section. This approach may be especially necessary if your
position is a soft-money position wherein you have to raise some or all of
your salary every year. Such soft-money positions are common in schools
of public health (where the universe of obtainable grants is correspondingly
much larger than in most areas of economics) and at multilateral institutions
like the agencies that compose the CGIAR, such as the International Food
Policy Research Institute.