PHILADELPHIA -- The University of Pennsylvania has received a $366,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to support the Center for the Advanced Study of India, CASI, which will conduct empirically based case studies of diaspora/home country interactions.

The grant will cover a 26-month period that will include case study research examining Mexico, Russia, India, Argentina and will fund commissioned papers on institutional, policy and analytical issues for a book and for a workshop, to be held in Washington, D.C., at the World Bank.

The project will investigate the increased importance of diaspora networks to home economies that goes beyond direct economic impacts alone, either through technology transfer or “knowledge networks.” The project will additionally help to understand how such institutional developments inform and advance policy debate.

Devesh Kapur, director of CASI and the Madan Lal Sobti Professor for the Study of Contemporary India at Penn, is the principal investigator and will lead the India case study team.

Some of the case-study researchers are from the Higher School of Economics in Russia, Flacso in Mexico and the University of California, Berkeley.

The World Bank will provide additional funding for South Korea’s study.

One of the projects main collaborators is Yevgeny Kuznetsov, senior economist in the Knowledge for Development Program at the World Bank Institute.

The Center for the Advanced Study of India, founded in 1992 at the University of Pennsylvania, is the only research institution in the United States dedicated to the study of contemporary India.

The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. More information is available at www.macfound.org.