The ERC (European Research Council), set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe.
This ERC Starting Grant has three main goals. First, to improve the theoretical understanding of the design of optimal social insurance and Welfare-to-Work (WTW) programs. Second, to provide a new structural framework for the evaluation of existing policies. Third, to apply the methodology to specific situations.
This ERC Advanced grant linked the different models together to understand the choices of a decision-maker. It outlined a viable theory that successfully describes the decision-maker's uncertainty attitudes based on recently developed models.
Using an economic approach, this ERC Starting Grant investigated conflicts in poor countries by examining the interaction of cultural, political and economic determinants.