This program provides an opportunity for recent PhDs (one to two years post-graduate) specializing in public finance or urban economics to work with senior academics.

Lincoln Institute Scholars will be invited to the institute for a program on April 18–20, 2024, that will include:

• presentations by a panel of journal editors on the academic publication process;

• a workshop in which senior scholars comment on draft papers written by the Lincoln Institute Scholars;

• an opportunity for the Lincoln Institute Scholars to present their research; and

• a seminar in which leading scholars in public finance and urban economics present their latest research.

For information on previous Lincoln Scholars, please visit Lincoln Scholars Program Alumni.

This RFP will open on November 15, 2023.

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy invites proposals for original research on land policies and urban development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our objective is to understand how land policies are overcoming—or can overcome—systemic challenges to sustainable development in the region, including housing affordability and informality, spatial segregation, fiscal autonomy, and climate change. We need to think holistically to produce structural changes to address these challenges, so we are seeking to shed light on current policy debates across the region on key research areas of interest to the Lincoln Institute. These areas include the implementation of land-based financing instruments for infrastructure finance and fiscal stability, approaches to informal settlements’ upgrading and regularization, policies to reduce housing deficits, and enabling nature-based solutions for climate action.

Application guidelines and proposal submissions are also available in Spanish and Portuguese.

The submission deadline has been extended from January 29 to February 5, 2024. 

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy invites proposals for original research that can be applied to address the challenge of promoting the fiscal health of municipal governments in a range of contexts and institutional settings across the world. We are particularly interested in research that explores the ways sound urban planning, land-based taxation, and economic development combine with disciplined financial management to promote prosperous, sustainable, equitable, and fiscally healthy communities.

Research proposed should examine some of the most pressing questions that local officials around the world are confronting in the fiscal policy arena, with an emphasis on the implications for local land policy and planning decisions.

The submission deadline has been extended from January 22, 2024 to January 29, 2024. 

The Lincoln Institute seeks research proposals on approaches the public sector uses to quantify the value it adds to private land through its actions—a critical step toward recovering at least part of that added value to reinvest in projects or services that benefit communities. Estimating the land value increments government actions trigger is still an area of land-based financing that merits greater understanding. For instance, adequately implementing public financing tools like special assessments or betterment contributions requires technical studies to assess the value increases that investments in infrastructure produce in adjacent or nearby private land; measuring those value increases allows contributions to be properly allocated among property owners who benefit from such public investments. Similarly, when an urban district is rezoned to allow for more productive land uses or denser development, localities may estimate charges or fees for the right to build according to the newly established land use or density allowance.

We are interested in methods, techniques, and practical approaches across geographies, and in a diversity of institutional settings, to value land appreciation due to public actions—including investments in roads, railways, bridges, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, transit systems, blue-green infrastructure, telecommunications, and so forth, as well as to value added by changes in land use regulations or upzoning.