Past Grants

Mark Cancian will lead an effort to explore how diplomatic and military history can shed light on current national security challenges. He will organize a series of meetings for foreign policy professionals focused on new works of diplomatic and military history.

Daniel Goldhaber and Roddy Theobald will explore the role that teacher training programs have on the effectiveness of teachers after they enter the profession. They will collect data from most of the enrollees in teacher training programs in the state of Washington in order to identify patterns among theseprograms, such as specific coursework or the intensity of student teaching, that contribute to later success in the profession. The project’s findings will appear in a report and a series of papers.

Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann will examine whether key institutional features of school systems, such as accountability measures, teacher assessments, and school financing, can improve educational outcomes. They will build a panel set of cross-national student achievement data drawn from the Program for International Student Assessment and then develop corresponding data on institutional features of national school systems. They will use these data to begin testing hypotheses about how differing institutional arrangements are associated with varying levels of educational performance. The project’s findings will appear in a series of reports, papers, and briefings.

Leon Aron will lead an effort to develop an intellectual and policy framework to anticipate possible Russian efforts to subvert the independence of its neighbors. He will commission analyses by scholars and experts on the Russian military as well as country experts on Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Latvia, and Moldova. They will analyze the likelihood and character of potential Russian attempts to intervene in or coerce these states, either directly or indirectly. The project’s findings will appear in an edited volume.

Greg Scarlatoiu will direct the research program of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. The committee will produce reports on North Korea’s Workers’ Party, the privileges and human rights abuses experienced by North Korea’s nuclear scientists, the economic pressure the nuclear program exerts on society, and the regime’s human rights violations at the local level. The committee’s findings will be published in a series of monographs and disseminated through briefings.

Mara Hvistendahl will research and write a book exploring the challenges posed by China’s industrial espionage and identifying approaches to develop countermeasures. She will analyze secondary and primary source materials and conduct interviews in China and the United States with government officials, business leaders, and academic leaders.

Sarah Cohodes and Sean Corcoran will examine whether children from lowincome backgrounds can improve school performance through informational tools designed to help them and their parents choose high schools that best meet their needs. They will provide students at randomly selected New York City schools with varying levels of information about high school options. They will measure the extent to which this information affected their school choices and the degree to which those choices later led to improvements in student performance. The project’s findings will appear in a series of papers and briefings.

Jacob Vigdor will lead an effort to examine how an increase in the minimum wage in Seattle to $15 per hour affects employment, earnings, and receipt of public benefits. The project will make use of individual-level data on employment and earnings, firm-level data on employment and earnings, and public assistance records. These data will allow the research team to better answer important questions, such as whether an increase in earnings for some individuals could lead to a decrease in employment for others and whether changes in earnings lead to changes in the cost of public assistance programs. The project’s findings will appear in a series of reports that will inform the national debate over minimum-wage laws and low-wage labor markets in general.

William McCants will research and write a book exploring Saudi Arabia’s efforts to proselytize for its interpretation of Islam overseas and assessing the effect of those efforts on the level of jihadist activities among targeted countries. He will analyze primary and secondary literature pertaining to Saudi proselytizing activities; conduct field work in a variety of countries, and interview Saudi officials and representatives of the Muslim World League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.