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Second-Year Research Fellowships Recipients Announced for 2023

26 September, 2023

The winners of this year‘s Second-Year Research Fellowships have been announced! Congratulations to the winners: Vladimir Shchukin, Ilisa Goenka and Winnie Njoroge!

The purpose of these fellowships sponsored by CERGE-EI is to facilitate the transition from coursework to dissertation research and increase the probability that students will successfully complete their studies at CERGE-EI in an expeditious manner. Eligible students receive a call for entries in the Spring. First, second and third prizes carry a fellowship in the amount of CZK 55,000, CZK 45,000 and CZK 38,000 that is paid off monthly over the fellowship duration.

Marek Kapička and Paolo Zacchia, members of this year’s academic committee, have selected the following winners:

The first prize goes to Vladimir Shchukin, who has been developing an incipient theory about the political dynamics that led to historical patterns of industrialization, with emphasis on the role of the aristocratic class. The proposal, which contains some preliminary results, has the potential to significantly expand the extant literature on this topic, and to pave the way for empirical studies in the field of economic history.

The second prize goes to Ilisa Goenka, who plans to study optimal capital taxation when people depart from full rationality by having a limited planning horizon. Limited planning creates a space for additional distortions that need to be taken into account by a welfare maximizing government. The objective is to characterize how finite planning horizon, as well as heterogeneity in planning horizons, changes the incidence of capital taxation, and the optimal capital tax rates.

The third prize goes to Winnie Njoroge, who proposes to conduct a field experiment in Kenya to understand dynamics of matching in the labor market when discrimination of non-coethnics may be expected. In particular, the experiment would assess whether randomized signals of non-discriminatory behavior from the employer's side would enhance worker sorting between competitive and "non-competitive" positions.

From left to right: Winnie Njoroge, Vladimir Shchukin, Ilisa Goenka