Policy Support Fund success for Economics researchers

Policy Support Fund success for Economics researchers

Congratulations to Dr Bhaskar Chakravorty. Dr Nikhil Datta, Dr Amrita Kulka and Dr Marta Santamaria on their success in the Policy Support Fund 2025Link opens in a new window round.

The Policy Support Fund is funded by Research England and administered by Warwick’s Research & Impact Services Link opens in a new windowteam. Grants are awarded for strategic projects working towards enabling evidence-based policy making.

• Dr Chakravorty’s project - Scaling Proactive Support Systems: Embedding Evidence-Based Practices into Migration Centre Operating Protocols – will explore how to better support young women from Bihar and Jharkhand who migrate for work by strengthening services offered through government-run Migration Support Centres in cities like Delhi and Bangalore. At present many young women who move to cities for work after graduating from training programmes focused on rural young people drop out and return home. Working with partners in India, Dr Chakavorty will evaluate interventions to improve the support offered to these young women and help them stay in their jobs.
  
  
• Dr Datta and Dr Kulka’s successful project - The Spatial Impacts of Large Infrastructure Projects: Evidence from London’s Elizabeth Line – builds on their existing portfolio of research into land use and housing markets with a focus on areas impacted by the Elizabeth Line, London’s East-West railway which opened in 2022. After analysing how the new line affected housing markets, spatial inequality, and residential amenities, Dr Datta and Dr Kulka will build an urban economics model able to simulate the impact of future transport projects. They hope this will be of great value to policymakers developing the London Infrastructure Plan 2050.
  
  
• Dr Santamaria’s project - Disunited Kingdom? Uncovering Domestic Frictions for consumer and firms – will use postcode-level data from customer and business transactions to investigate the extent and causes of domestic market fragmentation between the four nations of the United Kingdom, and will make recommendations on how to achieve a better-integrated domestic market, essential for UK-wide growth.

Head of Department Jeremy Smith said:

“Congratulations to Amrita, Bhaskar, Marta and Nikhil on winning these grants. I am glad to see the Department represented so strongly in the awards made this year. These short-duration projects are of great value in themselves and provide a very strong foundation for bids to external funders down the line.

“Given the highly competitive nature of the PSF, not every application succeeds. I would like to thank all colleagues who put time and effort into preparing bids.”

25 September 2025