Call for Hosts: LI-LMI Pre-Conference Workshop at Annual Meeting

Earlier this year, the AAEA Trust Committee awarded six economists from low income and lower middle income (LI-LMI) countries full travel grants to attend and present their research at the 2014 AAEA Annual Meeting in Minneapolis. AAEA would like to pair each of the grant recipients with a host who will be attending the meeting to encourage networking, communication, and collaboration among a more diverse pool of professionals. The main role of the host is to attend a Pre-Conference workshop on Saturday, July 26 and help the delegate prepare for the presentation of their research in a Selected Presentation session.
Our hope is that some of the travel grant winners and their hosts will apply for the Uma Lele Mentor Fellowship program which provides funding for a mentorship relationship between an AAEA member and an economist from a low income and lower-middle income country. Eugenie Maïga, from the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) in Ghana, was a LI-LMI grant recipient last year and won the Uma Lele Fellowship this year. The ultimate goal for this workshop is to create vibrant, long-lasting networks of scholars working on current and newly emerging challenges to economic development in these regions.
If you are interested in participating or would like to nominate someone, please contact Angela Ludwig (aludwig@aaea.org) at the AAEA Business Office.
Winners of the 2014 Travel Grant for Economists from Low Income or Lower-Middle Income Countries

• Opeyemi Ayinde, from the University of Ilorin in Ilorin, Nigeria, will be presenting her paper “Analysis of Supply Response and Price Risk on Rice Production in Nigeria”
• Alaba Modupe Dare, from the Federal University of Agriculture in Abeokuta, Nigeria, will be presenting her paper “Rural Households' Access, Willingness to Pay (WTP) and Factors Influencing WTP for Safe Water and Sanitation in Southwest Nigeria”
• Taiwo Ejiola Mafimisebi, from Federal University of Technology in Akure, Nigeria, will be presenting his paper “Responsiveness of Spatial Price Volatility to Increased Government Participation in Maize Grain and Maize Meal Marketing in Zambia”
• Assa Maganga, from Agriculture and Natural Resources Management Consortium (ANAMARC) in Lilongwe, Malawi, will be presenting his paper “A Food Demand System Estimation for Rural Malawi: Estimates Using Third Integrated Household Survey Data”
• Sendhil Ramadas, from the Directorate of Wheat Research in Haryana, India, will be presenting his paper “Performance and Relevance of Wheat Futures Market in India - An Exploratory Analysis”
• Rajib Sutradhar, from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, will be presenting his paper “Procurement of Fresh Produce by Modern Marketing Channels and their Impact on Farming Household-Evidence from India”