ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The relentless rise in diabetes is one of the greatest global health emergencies of the 21st century. The increase is most pronounced in low and middle income countries where today three quarters of people with diabetes live and over 80% of the deaths attributed to non-communicable diseases occur. In light of the wealth of knowledge already available about how to tackle the problem, most major international organizations call for the adoption healthy public policies and initiatives to strengthening health systems. However, implementation of recommended action remains limited in many settings. Most evidence comes from high-income settings and may generate recommendations that cannot be successfully implemented in other settings without careful consideration and contextualization. I propose here that this “know-do” gap can be reduced by revealing the barriers to implementing evidence-based recommendations, engaging local stakeholders in developing context-led innovations and developing a tool-kit for contextualizing and implementing diabetes recommendations in low-resource settings. I plan the research in two carefully selected settings in Ecuador, with mixed-methods combining quantitative epidemiological research and qualitative methodology to generate the rich and varied knowledge that is required to trigger policy action and/or changes in care models. Furthermore, I will engage patients, community members, health workers and decision makers in the process of knowledge generation, interpretation and use. The overarching objective is hence, to explore the process by which global recommendations can be translated into context-specific, evidence-informed action for diabetes prevention in low-resource settings. The findings will support the global endeavour to bridge the global “know-do” gap, one of the most important public health challenges this century and a great opportunity for strengthening health systems and achieving health equity.

1 475 334 €

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

The main objective of this project is to research the economic implications of default and collateral in financial markets. It is motivated from the observation that much of the lending in modern economies is secured by some form of collateral and by the empirical fact that modern economies experience a substantial amount of default and bankruptcy. From a theoretical perspective, the research aims to explore new ways of modelling default and collateral and employ them to evaluate the impact of default and collateral on market outcomes. From a policy recommendation perspective, the research aims to develop models with testable implications that can be used by practitioners to discuss the consequences of a wide range of policies. In particular, to explore which kind of regulation procedures should be implemented in order to lower the risk of default and at the same time not to reduce too much risk-sharing. The agenda includes two research directions. The first research direction will focus on the implications of default and collateral in economies with bounded rational agents. Our aim is to understand how default and collateral affect market outcomes in environments where agents are allowed to have very divergent and therefore possibly incorrect beliefs about endogenous economic variables like future prices and delivery rates. The second research direction will focus on the implications of default and collateral in economies with an open ended horizon. Our aim is to investigate endogenous debt constraints that are compatible with equilibrium and simultaneously allow for as much risk sharing as possible.

156 538 €

Start date: 2010-06-01, End date: 2012-06-30

Empathy – sharing and understanding others’ emotions and thoughts – is a defining feature of what it means to be human. However, we lack knowledge about the origins of empathy and to what extent its sub-components reflect species and cultural universals. Studying infants and great apes enables us to identify the developmental and evolutionary origins of empathy and the extent of its human uniqueness. Until now, it has largely been assumed that infants and great apes lack the capacity for empathy. However, this claim may reflect a lack of adequate methodologies and research attention, leaving infant and great ape empathy underestimated. Now, combining novel techniques to investigate empathy comparatively (thermal-imaging, pupillometry and eye-tracking) with longitudinal observations and innovative experiments, EMPORIGIN will overcome this issue to provide the first comparative investigation of empathy development in humans and bonobos, our closest living relatives. Rich datasets on bonobo (wild and semi-captive) infant development and caregiver interactions will be compared to those from human infants in two small-scale, traditional societies – Vanuatu and Samoa. Both societies show distributed-caregiving but vary in societal structure and emotional expressivity. Using a cross-species and cross-cultural approach, EMPORIGIN will deliver step-change insights into empathy development that go far beyond the State-of-the-Art. We will test the hypothesis that humans and bonobos share a core capacity for empathy, but humans diverge in a greater motivation to ameliorate others’ emotional states and a capacity for reciprocal emotional exchange. These capacities could lead to a cascade of human-unique forms of sharing and co-operation. Combining approaches across biology, psychology, ethology and anthropology, EMPORIGIN will advance our understanding of the origins of empathy, one of our most remarkable capacities, and challenge current perspectives about its human uniqueness.

1 499 829 €

Start date: 2019-03-01, End date: 2024-02-29

Designating Protected Areas (PAs) is the most important policy tool for biodiversity conservation. Over 100 new PAs have been established in the past 36 months in European Union territory. However, effective management of PAs is often obstructed by conflicts mainly associated with the social impacts (SIs) imposed on local communities by their establishment. Despite the importance of these SIs there are certain aspects in this field that remain significantly under-researched. There is now an increasing need to incorporate SI assessments in decision making processes by providing a clear framework explaining how perceptions of these impacts are created and predicting their change in the future. This will support the achievement of international goals for biodiversity conservation and adaptation to climate change as well as better accounting for social justice issues for communities dependent on protected natural resources. The aim of FIDELIO is to develop for the first time a new paradigm in order to understand how perceptions of SIs are formulated taking into consideration the dimensions of space and time. FIDELIO will assist in increasing public engagement and the incorporation of local opinions in decision-making. It will also facilitate the process of policy development and a reduction in conflicts between different stakeholders in PAs. FIDELIO will last 5 years and its research objectives will be explored through the application of a mixed-methods approach including the implementation of two rounds of social surveys in 4 PAs across Europe and the testing of the framework in 15 additional PAs. This is an extremely timely project considering the steady increase of new PAs and the re-designation of current ones. FIDELIO will contribute to the better understanding of SIs and facilitate predictions for their change in the future, while assisting in maximizing social benefits for local communities arising from the designation of a PA.

1 495 786 €

Start date: 2019-02-01, End date: 2024-01-31