The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded two highly competitive ERC Consolidator Grants, totaling nearly EUR 4 million, to researchers at the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich. Lorenzo Casaburi and Maya Eden, who are both affiliated with the UBS Center, were selected among 349 grantees across Europe. Their projects address two pressing global challenges: how land markets shape economic development and how governments should respond to declining birth rates.

Land Markets and Economic Development (DEVOLAND)

Lorenzo Casaburi received an ERC Consolidator Grant of EUR 1,998,750 for his project Land Markets and Economic Development (DEVOLAND). Starting in 2026 and running for five years, the project examines how access to land and land ownership affect livelihoods, productivity, and urban growth in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Land is one of the most valuable assets in low-income countries, yet land markets remain poorly understood. Casaburi’s project combines administrative records, satellite imagery, and innovative field experiments to study how land markets are evolving and to identify the causal effects of participating in them. The findings aim to generate new evidence on how land markets function and to inform policies that promote fairer access to land and more sustainable economic development.

Casaburi, who also received an ERC Starting Grant in 2020, is a development economist whose research focuses on agriculture, finance, and land markets. He works closely with governments, firms, and non-profit organizations to generate rigorous evidence on policy-relevant questions in low-income settings.

Non-Utilitarian Perspectives on Population Policy (NU-POPP)

Maya Eden was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant of EUR 1,993,568 for her project Non-Utilitarian Perspectives on Population Policy (NU-POPP). The five-year project, also starting in 2026, addresses a question facing many advanced economies: how, if at all, governments should respond to declining birth rates.

While economic analyses of population policy often rely on utilitarian frameworks, Eden’s project integrates ethical considerations into the economic assessment of policies aimed at influencing fertility. It asks whether governments should incentivize people to have more children, at what cost, and for what reasons, and examines the normative foundations underlying such interventions.

Eden’s research lies at the intersection of economics and moral philosophy. She is known for her work on normative economics, social choice, and the ethical evaluation of public policy, bringing conceptual clarity to debates where economic efficiency and moral considerations intersect.

Together, these two ERC grants underscore the strength and breadth of research at Zurich’s Department of Economics, spanning empirical development economics and foundational questions in normative policy analysis.