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Keynes Fund

 

Application process & guidelines:

We consider applications throughout the year for the PhD Small Awards Scheme for Cambridge PhD students and will respond to your request as soon as possible.

Please download and use this application form and send your application to keynes-fund@econ.cam.ac.uk

Each application requires a supporting letter from the applicant’s supervisor which sets out why the Fund should provide support and which makes the case for how the support will make a material difference to the student’s academic progress and/or research agenda. This letter should be submitted directly by the supervisor to the Fund.

Objective of scheme:

Applicants should choose one of the following to apply for:

  1. the cost of attending a conference or workshop to disseminate research and build networks
    OR
  2. the cost of buying access to datasets
    OR
  3. the cost of fees to submit an article to a peer-reviewed international journal.

Award amount:

For conferences and workshops: up to £2,000 to cover conference fees, travel and accommodation.

For datasets: up to £3,000 to cover the cost of buying access to the dataset.

Who can apply?

This scheme is open to Cambridge PhD students whose research is within the remit of the Keynes Fund for Applied Economics.

The remit of the fund is:

The focus of the teaching and research supported by the Fund shall be the sources and consequences of failure of market efficiency, particularly but not exclusively as a result of Agency costs. In particular, the income of the Fund shall be used to encourage research into: capital market mispricing; the design of incentive systems and mechanisms to reduce the incidence and significance of institutional or general economic failure as well as into responsive public policies. The scope of work to be funded shall include interactions between the financial markets and the real economy.

The Managers of the Fund shall encourage research based on empirical observation of the behaviour of market participants, drawing as appropriate on relevant work in the other social sciences, biology and history. They shall also encourage academics to extend the frontiers of traditional economics in order to raise Cambridge's profile in the critical area between economic theory, best private sector practice and public policy, with a bias towards promoting long-term thinking, dampened pro-cyclicality, improved economic growth and reduced income/wealth disparities. 

Criteria:

The applications will be judged on:

  1. how well they match the objectives of the Fund.
  2. how important the activity is to the student’s academic development and research agenda.

For conference/workshop applications, it is expected that the applicant will present a research paper. For applications received prior to confirmation of whether a research paper is accepted for presentation at a conference or workshop, funding will be made contingent on a positive response.

For dataset applications, the application must set out the research project for which the data will be used and explain why the particular data are needed and cannot be obtained through other channels. If possible, the data should be acquired in such a way that they can be used by other researchers in Cambridge.

For support for submission fees, the application must set out the rationale for the choice of journal and include an endorsement from the supervisor. Successful applicants should inform the Fund if the article eventually gets accepted. Priority will be given to students towards the end of their studies.

Applicants can submit at most one application per year and priority for conference/workshop funding will be given to Cambridge PhD students in their 3rd and 4th year.

Priority will be given to applications from students who are not already in receipt of other funding awards that could fund the activity applied for.

Please note that applications must be submitted before any costs have incurred.