We are delighted to announce that Simeon Djankov, Co-Director for Policy at the FMG, has been awarded a John Templeton Foundation Grant for his research proposal Women’s Empowerment, Economic Freedom, and the Role of Law in Driving Prosperity (grant ID 62616).
The project focuses on legal change that serves to increase women’s economic freedom and the factors that make such change possible. This topic is investigated using both country case studies and cross-country panel analysis. The second part of the project takes the factors that are shown to determine women’s economic empowerment and investigates how these factors determine the overall progress towards freedom and prosperity. While the first task is mainly performed using country case study methods, the second task utilizes available large-scale datasets that allow analysis globally and over time.
In summary, the project is about the mechanism through which successful legal reform for women’s economic freedom takes place. At its broader level, it aims to enrich the field of law and development. The link between these two lines of inquiry - on the effects of gendered laws and on the effects of regulatory change - lies in the legal determinants of freedom. Ultimately, the project hopes to demonstrate that legal change brings positive outcomes in both the specific area of women's empowerment and in the broader area of business activity.
The grant is for 2.5 years, from August 2022 to February 2025.
Simeon is also Principal Investigator of the project "How the design of bankruptcy procedures impacts macroeconomic and employment outcomes in the post-Covid recovery period: lessons from previous crises" funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant reference ES/V015508/1).
