The Fisher Center annually sponsors a research grant program available to all UC Berkeley Ph.D. students with research projects in the areas of real estate, real estate finance, and urban economics. Over the past twenty years, the Center has given out more than $2,000,000 to over 100 students and faculty at Berkeley.
The Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics has a limited amount of funding available for research proposals for UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidates and invites you to submit a proposal to fund research for fiscal year 2026/27. (Please note that this year the Fisher Center is not funding faculty research projects.)
Faculty may sponsor a Ph.D. by submitting a letter of recommendation, along with the student’s project statement.
PROPOSAL DUE DATE: Friday, May 1, 2026
TOPICS: Research related to real estate asset and capital markets, spatial economics, agglomeration and urban economics, climate risk and sustainability, transportation housing and mortgage markets, or consumer credit – all broadly defined.
FUNDING PERIOD: August 1, 2026 through May 30, 2027
TOTAL FUNDING AMOUNT: Up to $15,000 per project
PhD PROPOSALS MUST INCLUDE:
- A letter from the faculty sponsor
- A project statement from the student.
Project Statement: A concise single-spaced (4 pages maximum) proposal describing the research project. The statement should clearly address:
- The core research questions
- The relevant literature and the scholarly contributions the project aims to make
- Research methodology. In your research methodology section, please include modelling approach and data sources. If applicable, applicants should indicate whether access to restricted data sources has already been obtained or is still pending.
You may attach a draft version of your research paper to your proposal (if applicable), but the project statement should be able to stand alone.
PhD STUDENT REQUIREMENTS:
- All Ph.D. proposals must be submitted through a faculty member.
- Student must have passed orals and received thesis committee approval before the start of the Fall 2026 semester in August 2026.
- Student must register for and attend the weekly Research Seminar in Real Estate and the graduate student preseminar in both Fall 2026 and Spring 2027 semesters.
- Submit at least one working paper on the research topic. The paper must include an abstract and, with faculty approval, it will be included in the Center’s working paper series.
APPLICATION: SUBMISSION FORM (LINK)
NOTIFICATION: Decisions will be made by the Fisher Center’s Research Grants Committee. Applicants will be notified by June 30, 2026.
QUESTIONS? : Contact Tom Chappelear via email ([email protected]) or call 510-643-6109.
For more information on applying, please contact Thomas Chappelear via email ([email protected]) or call 510-643-6109.
2025-2026 Fisher Center Grant Recipients
Suvy Qin, PhD Candidate, Agricultural and Resource Economics
Cutting Delays, Not Corners: The Role of Bureaucratic Performance in Housing Supply
The performance of bureaucrats is important for the effective implementation and enforcement of housing policies in the US. I study how the administrative capacity of local governments affects the ability to provide housing services through the permitting process. Using novel administrative data from Los Angeles, this paper provides evidence on the impacts of bureaucratic performance on permitting timelines and downstream project outcomes. I also simulate alternative personnel policies to quantify the cost savings generated by improving government capacity.
Gerard Martin Escofet, PhD Candidate, Economics
Dying Places
Several advanced economies are experiencing a dramatic increase in dying places –areas whose population consistently out-migrates and ages. In Spain, the case study of this project, one in six municipalities is set to disappear in 50 years considering only natural demographic change. Yet, quantitative spatial models ignore the extensive margin of locations. I develop a dynamic spatial model of migration where locations can suffer depopulation spirals and become empty. I use this framework to study optimal policy when places can die.
Chiara Motta, PhD Candidate, Haas School of Business
The Labor Market Incidence of Place-Based Policies
Place-based subsidies are among governments’ most widely used tools for supporting firms in lagging regions, yet their ultimate incidence remains poorly understood. This project will trace who captures the benefits of a large Italian place-based program along three margins: recipient firms, where the project will estimate effects on employment and wages; individual workers, distinguishing whether gains accrue to incumbent employees or to new hires, whose entry wages are constrained by collective-bargaining floors; and non-applicant competitors, to whom subsidies may spill over through local labor markets. The results will reveal who gains from place-based policies — with direct implications for their welfare evaluation.
Laila Voss, PhD Candidate, Economics
The Allocative Consequences of Property Tax Lock-In
Property tax assessment limits cap growth in taxable home values, creating differences in tax liabilities between long-tenured homeowners and recent buyers of similar homes. These differences may discourage moves, even as homeowners’ needs or preferences change. This project studies how tax lock-in affects residential mobility and housing allocation: who lives where, and in what kinds of homes. I examine California’s Proposition 13 and Proposition 19, which expanded tax-base portability for older homeowners. Linking homeowner panel, property and assessor-claims data, I follow movers across origin and destination homes. I will also conduct surveys on how homeowners learn about, understand, and respond to portability.
Isabel Qi, PhD Candidate, City and Regional Planning
Investigating Uneven Neighborhood Wildfire Mitigation: Formation and Activities of Firewise Communities in California
Blurb: Firewise Communities (FWCs), neighborhoods recognized by the National Fire Protection Association for collective wildfire mitigation planning, have grown from under 200 to over 1,400 sites across California since 2017. Yet little is known about who organizes them, what risk mitigation measures they undertake, and whether their benefits are equitably distributed. In this project, I use a novel FWC dataset, semi-structured interviews, and a household survey across select FWC sites to examine the drivers of FWC formation, variation in mitigation activities by neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics, and the relationship between collective wildfire mitigation actions and homeowners’ insurance access and affordability.
Elaine Shen, PhD Candidate, Economics
Who self-selects into financial literacy education? Does positive self-selection lead to greater inequality or measurement bias when evaluating the impact of financial literacy education? Financial literacy education has long been thought of as a potential policy tool for promoting economic mobility, reducing inequality, and improving long-term financial outcomes for individuals and households. However, the evidence evaluating the impact of financial literacy education on real-world financial outcomes remains somewhat weak. By combining administrative data on a large financial literacy class with a lab-in-field experiment, we evaluate whether there is positive selection into financial literacy education.