Individual Faculty Research Award
The UW–Madison Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy (WAGE) is pleased to announce the winners of our 2010 Individual Faculty Research Award competition. WAGE will provide support to six research projects that explore the consequences of and challenges posed by economic globalization and its governance. The recipients represent six different schools and colleges and include:
Jeremy Foltz, Agricultural and Applied Economics, CALS
“The Causes and Consequences of Petty Corruption in Africa”
Amount: $7500
This work will analyze the causes, organization, and consequences of petty corruption on several major truck routes of West Africa, with an eye to developing testable models of the organization of corruption. The results of this work may help to identify potential interventions to lessen the levels and/or the effects of petty corruption in Africa and around the globe.
Shubha Ghosh, Law
“Patent Law in Developing Countries: The Case of Colonial India”
Amount: $3000
Intellectual property affects many of the products and services we take for granted, from medicines to software to movies. But little is understood about how intellectual property law has developed historically. Ghosh’s project will examine previously unexplored materials on the development of intellectual property law in Colonial India and its influence on contemporary global intellectual property law.
Isao Kamata, Public Affairs and Economics
“Industrialization, Growth, and Globalization: Have New Patterns Emerged?”
Amount: $7000
This research project investigates the impacts of recent economic globalization—in terms of international production fragmentation involving offshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI)—on the evolution of a country’s structure of production and trade. The project addresses the longstanding “path of industrialization” in which a country’s production and exports typically shift from primary commodities to “light” manufacturing industries, and then to “heavy” manufacturing. In particular, the research examines whether and how the path has diversified to date, and it explores the role offshoring and FDI have played in the changing pattern of a country’s indusurialization.
Phillip Kim, Management and Human Resources, School of Business
“Foreign Direct Investment and Technology Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries”
Amount: $3600
Given the last decade’s steady increase of cross-border relationships involving developing countries, this project seeks to answer two questions. First, how does foreign direct investment (FDI) spur entrepreneurship, especially in knowledge-intensive sectors in developing economies? Second, how do FDI networks provide alternate governance structures that promote conditions necessary for business creation? Findings from this project will help us better understand the circumstances in which technology entrepreneurship occurs in regions where formal governance structures are in flux.
Adam Nelson, Educational Policy Studies and History
“‘Lighthouses in the Skies’: American Astronomy and Global Commerce, c. 1770-1830”
Amount: $2000
Part of a larger project on the institutionalization of advanced scholarship in the early United States, this research examines the field of astronomical science and its economic applications, c. 1770-1830. Nelson shows how American scholars collaborated with scholars around the world in various fields of astronomical research, from maritime navigation to coastal surveys to the international standardization of weights and measures. This analysis reveals how a growing infrastructure for conducting astronomical observations was crucial to the long-term economic globalization–and commercial competitiveness–of the United States.
Lydia Zepeda, Consumer Science
“Are Food Sovereignty and Consumer Demand for Organic and Local Foods Related?”
Amount: $3900
Consumer research has focused on environmental and economic aspects of food choices; this research emphasizes the third pillar of sustainability, social justice. Interviews will be conducted with consumers in France to investigate knowledge and attitudes toward the principles of food sovereignty and whether these are linked to organic and local food shopping behaviors.
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Pre-dissertation Travel Awards For Graduate Student Work
WAGE is also pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 pre-dissertation travel awards sponsored by WAGE’s Remaking the Developmental State research collaborative. The graduate work of these students fits within a larger effort to understand what new strategies have worked, or might work, in today’s competitive global environment to diversify and expand economic activities or to promote social well-being. Each of these six projects critically examines innovative development strategies or explores obstacles and opportunities presented by a rapidly changing global context. Please join us in congratulating the students!
Hsiao-ling Su, Anthropology
“Flexible Governance: State, Market and IP Rights in People’s Republic of China” – Awarded $1,200.
Barry Driscoll, Political Science
“The Contemporary Developmental State: The Power to Govern in West Africa” – Awarded $300 to supplement other awards.
Charles Taylor, Political Science
“Overcoming the Patrimonial State in Africa? Business Associations and Development in a Democratic Ghana” – Awarded $1,200.
Mytoan Nguyen, Sociology
“Remaking the Developmental State: Vietnam and Ethnic Returnees” – Awarded $1,200.
Trevor Young-Hyman, Sociology
“Governance and New Developmental State – Exploring How Variations in Governance Impact the Realization of Social and Economic Development” – Awarded $1,200.
Kweku Opoku-Agyemang, Developmental Studies
“Can Development work with an Informal Economy? Clues from Ghana” – Awarded $900.
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WAGE is part of the International Institute, a joint venture of the College of Letters & Science and the Division of International Studies.