Faculty receive Research Awards from the Emerging and Developing Economies Initiative, part of the Lam-Larsen Fund for Global Innovation

Three faculty members received research awards between $4,500 to $5,000 each for the 2020-2021 academic year to fund their leading-edge scholarly research proposals on contemporary issues facing emerging and developing markets.

These research awards are part of our Emerging and Developing Economies Initiative, funded by the Lam-Larsen Fund for Global Innovation, which supports activities that help redefine global corporate citizenship. Read more about the awardees and their research below.
 
Rex Cheung

Rex Cheung, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Decision Sciences

“An Analytic Approach to Understanding Renewable Energy Data between Emerging Markets and Developed Countries.”
 
This research aims to analyze renewable energy investments and production between emerging markets and developed countries. In particular, this project proposes to apply statistical and analytical methods to perform the following three tasks: compare the growth (or decay) trends between emerging markets and developed countries, test hypotheses to analyze the differences, and conduct clustering analysis to seek subgroups within each market to identify countries with similar behavior. While many reports provided by various companies summarize numerical information, there is a lack of formal statistical comparison of data between the two markets. 
 
Venoo Kakar

Venoo Kakar, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Economics

“Impact of Monetary Policy on Food Inequality in India.” 
 
Food insecurity and hunger continue to be pressing issues in developing countries. Food plays an indispensable role in the survival and welfare of a large share of poor households in India. This study would be the first of its kind to focus on the impact of monetary policy shocks on relative food prices and to examine its distributional effects on food consumption by focusing on subsistence food consumption of poor households in rural and urban India. This study will hold important policy implications for Indian central bankers and for policymakers in other low-income countries. 
 
Lihua Wang

Lihua Wang, Ph.D.

Professor, International Business

“Legitimization of Social Enterprises (SEs) Across Developmental Stages: Evidence from Emerging Markets.”
 
This project examines how social enterprises in emerging economies acquire legitimacy across different developmental stages. Since social enterprise is a relatively new form of organization in emerging economies, little empirical evidence exists on how social enterprises in emerging economies obtain legitimacy. This research will enrich our understanding of social enterprises in emerging economies.