Past Grants

Marcin Piatkowski will research and write a book examining the success of Polish economic policies since the Cold War and considering whether they could serve as a growth model for other countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

Clare Lockhart, Scott Guggenheim, and Homayun Qayoumi will test a new model of foreign-assistance implementation by supporting a policy planning team working with the president’s office in Afghanistan to design and field institutional reforms and national development programs. They will engage the government of Afghanistan on human capital development, natural resources development, infrastructure, and anti-corruption initiatives. The project’s findings will appear in a series of papers, briefings, and articles.

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.